Life As We Know It
by Hephaestus01
Summary: The sequel to What It Means To Be Alive. Babies, new marriages, and of course more drama. I live for reviews. Thank you for reading.
1. Chapter 1

Please let me know when those of you who are reading get bored with this story. I don't want to beat this horse to death. I see no end in site to this current line! If you enjoy the current arc, please let me know. If not...well, I will drop a meteor on the Earth and write a very quick ending chapter. Thank you to all those who have been so supportive!

Chapter 1

Chicago was nice. It wasn't as sunny, it seemed, as Las Angeles, but Xander thought he could definitely stay in a city such as the one he was currently in. He had been there for three days; it had taken him that long to convince himself to confront his blast from the past. He had found her address through a few spies he knew throughout the country. She had used the credit card Angel had given her at a furniture warehouse; she had traveled light, her apartment was being leased fully furnished.

The four story sand colored brick apartment building stood in a quiet part of the city. Xander hadn't expected her here, and he certainly hadn't expected to find her in such a quaint apartment building. He had imaged a high rise downtown as her chosen dwelling place. Swallowing his fears, he entered the building and flashed a fake badge to the doorman. The badge stated he was from an important security company; Xander had accepted the badge from his friend with the guarantee it would work and hadn't asked many questions. He would wing his way through trouble if he got into it, he had decided.

Walking to the fourth floor, he found apartment 402 and knocked on the door. Waiting a few moments, he heard her look through the peep hole and hesitate on the other end of the door. Finally, a dark haired and unhappy Cordelia opened the door. Sighing, she turned around and padded back to the living room in bare feet, jeans and navy blue wrap shirt. Sitting on the tan leather sectional, she looked at him expectantly but did not offer him a seat.

Smiling, he shook his head; she was the same Cordelia he had fallen in love with so long ago, he thought. "Hi to you, too."

"Why are you here Xander?"

Sitting down, even though he had not been invited to do so, he put one arm across the back of the couch and turned towards her. "I wanted to see you."

"Why?"

Thinking about the answer to that question, he formed his sentence carefully before responding. "I wanted to see a piece of the past I had mostly forgotten about. I wanted to know if…really, I want to take you to dinner."

Crossing her arms, she looked a little surprised. "No one sent you? Angel didn't ask you to talk some sense into me or some nonsense like that?"

"You think pretty highly of yourself, don't you? Angel's a new father as of about four days ago. He has enough to worry about without thinking of where you are or what you're doing."

Smiling at his honesty, she relaxed a little. "Okay. So you came just to take me to dinner? You flew four hours to take me to dinner? And you wonder why I think so highly of myself."

Smirking, he leaned closer to her. "I want to know what kind of woman you are, Cordy. I want to know who you are today. I just…got a little confused with the dead, not dead, thing. And you seem so different. I'm curious."

"Curious? Is that all? I'm so flattered."

Sighing, he shifted in his seat. "You aren't going to make this easy, are you?"

"Not a chance."

"Okay…" Taking a deep breath, he started with the best explanation he had, "I left my life in that crater formerly known as Sunnydale. I left everything I had ever known or loved. Including my wife. So, I am trying to move on. I've been trying to move on for years. I had a girlfriend in Africa, I had a job. I was anonymous and I didn't have any responsibilities except for a few field trips for The Council. Well, I left Subira in Africa with my lack of responsibilities. I want something familiar, Cordy. I need to be around someone familiar again."

"And Buffy and Dawn, they aren't familiar? You could go to England, Giles is there. Or France; you could stay with Willow. Why me?"

"Because I loved you once." Deciding to lay his cards bare on the table, he looked at her with trepidation. Not knowing how she would react to him or his reasoning, he tried to keep calm and focused while he waited for her response.

Licking her suddenly dry lips, she stood and walked silently down the hallway and into the kitchen. Taking a deep breath, she started to fill a tea kettle to put on the stove. She heard him approach her from behind but waited until the burner was lit and the kettle was on the burner before she turned to speak to him.

"You came to me because you're lonely and you remember what we had when we were teenagers. Is that it? You need a trip down memory lane; maybe you want me to assure you everything will be alright. Is that want you want?"

"I don't know what I want, Cordy. I know that it took me a long time to work up the nerve to come see you. I know that I felt like I was hit by a bus after I saw you walk into that conference room. What does that mean? I don't know, Cordy, but I want to find out. I don't know why I'm here! I just felt like I needed to see you."

Sighing, she sat at the kitchen table, which only had two chairs at either end of it, and put her chin in her hands. "Fair enough. I don't think I want you here, though."

"Fair enough." Sitting down, he put his forearms on the table and leaned forward. "Why did you come here? What made you leave L.A?"

Shrugging, she stood momentarily and poured them both mugs of tea without asking Xander if he wanted any. Sitting back down, she handed him a mug as she blew the steam from hers. Sipping the beverage, she looked at him to see an expectant expression. Exhaling slowly, she set her mug down and stared at him.

"I needed to get away from the familiar. Being tied to Angel…it was great for a long time. I wouldn't have traded that for anything. We didn't work well when we weren't together; nothing worked well when we weren't together. But now…I couldn't wake up in an apartment he found for me every morning. I couldn't answer a phone only he knew the number to. I…he has someone else. They are finally together. I'm happy for them. But I can't be around that right now."

"Their happiness is painful when you're miserable."

"I guess." Sipping her tea, she swallowed before speaking again, "Yeah, maybe. I'm so used to him pining over her. I'm so used to him being miserable and alone and…well, he isn't any more. And I'm happy for him. But…I used to be the one he went to."

Nodding, Xander stared into his cup of dark liquid. Blowing steam away from it, he swirled the mug with his wrist so the liquid formed a short lived whirl pool. Looking up, he watched as she stared intently into her mug. "You're the other woman. That's what you said. You meant it, didn't you?"

Nodding slowly, she looked up at him with a forced grin. "I guess so. I was, wasn't I? He came to me instead of going to her. He relies on me too much when I'm there because that's all he's known for so long. I mean, I know that was a long time ago, but I was the last person to be comforting, supportive."

"What about the others?"

Shaking her head, she scoffed, "They were all to busy…too busy with stuff. Fred was, well, she was an evil hell god for a while and that will screw with a person. And guys don't let guys cry. They don't do that kind of stuff. He needed someone and there wasn't anyone there to meet his needs. When Buffy came back into his life, I guess he tried to rely on her, but he was too damaged. When I cam back, he immediately came back to me. I was the other woman."

"You never slept together, did you?"

"No. Not that I didn't think about it. We just didn't. He loves her too much; he always loved her too much."

"And now you're in Chicago. Alone, you don't know anyone; you work at a fashion Boutique downtown part time and at a small law firm as a secretary the other part of the time. That doesn't sound like you."

Raising an eyebrow, she told herself she wasn't surprised. "You did your homework. It's a life. It's better than no life at all. I still have visions, I kill bad things. I just need to live a quiet life for right now."

Leaning back, he looked at her in a way he hadn't looked at her in a long time. She was beautiful and intelligent and had matured so greatly since he had last seen her. Trying to remember the Cordelia he had known, he found it was difficult to do so. This woman was the same woman, yet was entirely different. Clearing his throat, he suddenly wanted to spend much more time for this person in front of him.

"How about that dinner? Could you stand my presence, you think?"

Smirking, she looked at him with kind eyes. "Xander, I always liked your presence. I'd love to go to dinner with you."

"Great. Actually, I didn't get very far beyond that in my planning; I think that means you have to decide where we go."

Laughing for the first time in a long time, she stood and walked into her bedroom. He didn't follow her this time. Slipping on understated heels and pulling a black lightweight button down cardigan over her shirt, she took a deep breath and tried to convince herself this was not a date. Composing herself, she started into the hallway.

Xander was handsome, she thought. He was handsome and no longer completely awkward. Following him to his rental car parked on the street, she tried to stay calm as she directed him to a restaurant she had heard of but never tried. She hadn't been out since arriving in the city; she hated going out alone and she didn't want to be accompanied by any of her co-workers.

After being seated, she tried to convince herself she didn't care if Xander decided he liked her. Telling herself it was of no consequence to her if he got back on a plane half way through dessert; she tried to be calm as she looked at the wine list. Glancing occasionally at her companion, she started to remember when her last date had been and almost winced. Shaking the memories away, she chose a wine and set the menu down, smiling across the table as she did so.

Smiling back, Xander forced himself to stop from loosening his collar. This was Cordelia, his mind said, a woman he'd known all his life. She isn't a threat, he told himself. His sweating palms were reminding him that he had always thought otherwise. Taking a deep breath, he tried to relax and lean back in his seat. He wanted very badly for this night to go well.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Laughing at a smiling Brady, Buffy put her lips to her sons' stomach and blew, making the baby giggle with laughter at the raspberry tickled his thin skin. He was still so tiny, she thought, but he was very strong. His kicks hurt her hands. His eyes stayed open for most of the time he was awake and his coos and grunts seemed to Buffy to actually mean something lately. In only a week, her baby had grown into a new being.

Lifting Brady into her arms, she held him against her shoulder as she made her way out of the nursery and downstairs to the living room. An exhausted Angel was sitting on the couch, barely awake, a precariously held drink in his hands. Hearing her approach, he tried to rouse himself. He had taken a week off to spend time with Buffy and his new son, Will had taken over as President in his absence. It was now Sunday, almost exactly seven days after Brady's birth, and Angel knew he would have to return to the office the next day.

Excepting his son into his arms, he cuddled the baby to him as Buffy started breakfast. It had been Angel's turn to get up with Brady in the night; Buffy had started using a contraption Angel preferred not to think about to pump the natural milk her body made into the bottles he could use to feed Brady. She had told Angel that there was no way she was going to be the only one feeding the baby every two hours.

Kissing his son, he looked at the beautiful baby boy and smiled. Closing his eyes, he held his son on his shoulder and tried to fall asleep for a few moments. Brady's gurgling made him give up on that idea. Rising from the couch, he went into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

"You know we never use the dining room?"

"We're never that formal," Angel responded.

Shrugging, Buffy set bowls of fruit on the table and went back to finish scrambling the eggs. After setting three places she took Brady from Angel and put the infant in his high-chair. The high-chair had been a gift from Connor, it was adjustable for babies from birth to three years, and he had thought the camouflage motif was perfect for Brady.

Looking at Angel briefly, she turned back to her plate and ate a few bites of her eggs and a piece of melon before looking up again. He seemed pretty focused on whatever he was reading in the newspaper, she thought.

"Anything interesting?"

"Stock market's doing well. I wanted to check on some investments."

"Oh." Pushing the eggs around on her plate, she looked up again at him and took a deep breath before speaking. "So, I don't want to pressure you or anything, but when are we getting married?"

Yawning, he looked up from the paper, folded it, and pushed it away. "When do you want to?"

"Now? Is now good for you?"

Laughing, he smiled at her, reaching over the table to take her hand. "What do you want? Do you want the church thing? Do you want an outdoor wedding? Tell me what you want and we'll try to make it happen."

Thinking for a few moments, she tried to explain what she had been thinking about for the past few months, "I want it outdoors. On the beach. I want to be barefoot and there should be a trellis with roses behind us. And it should be small. I don't want to invite people I don't like or that you work with. Just family. It's almost September, so I think we should do this before it gets too cold."

Nodding, he squeezed her hand. "We can do that. What do you want me to do? Don't put me in charge of anything related to flowers or colors or anything. That's your job I hope. I can find a location, though, if you want me to."

"Well, I think it should be a small party. No big reception, just our family, and we can go to dinner afterwards or something."

"I think I know what you want. I'll call some people tomorrow and start getting this together. Give me a date."

"Umm…three weeks? On a Saturday. Yeah, three weeks from yesterday. Can we do it that fast? I know that's really short notice, but I don't want to wait anymore."

"What are we talking about?" Walking into the kitchen, Connor went straight to the stove to make himself a plate. Sitting at the table a few moments later, he looked expectantly at the couple. "Seriously, what are we talking about?"

"A wedding. I want to get married. Well, so does Angel. We want to get married."

"That's cool. When?"

"Three weeks," Buffy said excitedly.

Connor wasn't surprised. He knew Buffy wanted to be married to Angel very badly; he had been surprised when Buffy and Angel had decided to wait until after the birth. Swallowing eggs quickly, he looked up when Brady started to whine. The baby didn't cry often, but he did make keening noises that were enough to get his parents' attention. Watching Buffy lift her son, Connor smiled. She was very good at being a mom, he thought. Quickly finishing his eggs, he stood and playfully punched Angel in the shoulder as he left the kitchen.

Their day went slowly, peacefully. Connor went over paper work that Faith had been sending him, Angel napped with Brady at the bedside and Buffy practiced tai chi and completed a few stress free work outs. She hadn't wanted to tax her body too much, but she had been eager to start training again; it had been nearly six months since she had stopped her formal training.

Stretching after her exercises, she peeked in on Angel and Brady before going back downstairs and into Angel's study. She had found the hiding place for the portrait Angel swore wasn't finished yet, but she had promised to refrain from peeking at it until he was ready to give it her. Sitting at the desk, she thumbed through a few papers Angel had been going through during his week working out of their home before her cell phone rang.

Smiling, she greeted Giles on the other end of the line. Assuring him Brady was perfectly fine, she laughed into the phone as he told her of his return trip to England. He had stayed for three days after Brady's birth, bonding with who he considered his grandson and getting to know Angel a little better. Connor had even given Giles the photo albums to look at that Angel had recently revealed. The older man, in the short time he had visited, had come to a considerably better understanding of the man Buffy was planning on marrying.

They spoke for a short time before Giles had to return to his business but promised to fly in and see Brady in a few months. Smiling, Buffy hung up the phone feeling that her relationship with her adopted father was in better condition that it had been for years. Absently reading through a few open files, she sighed and leaned her head on her fist. Motherhood had invigorated Buffy, she felt more alive now that she had in years, which meant she was also easily bored when she wasn't with her son.

Standing again, she wished Angel would wake up and spar with her. She settled for finding Connor instead. Her step son was only a few years younger than her, but she tried to minimize any awkwardness the lack of age difference could cause. She had been trying to relate to Connor as she would to a friend, not as she imagined herself relating to Brady in twenty years.

Knocking on the door to his bedroom, she smiled as she entered. "Up for some sparring?"

"I thought you weren't supposed to do that stuff for a month."

"Slayers aren't included in that. Look," lifting her shirt slightly, he saw the edge of an already healed wound; it was rapidly progressing into a thin scar. "All better. Let's train."

Smiling, he put his pen down on his desk and followed Buffy to the gym. Discarding his socks and shirt, he stood in the middle of the mat in track pants and a ribbed undershirt. Taking position, he waited for her to slip her tai chi slippers off. Standing opposite him, she smiled wickedly as he attacked.

Catching his arm with her left hand, she hit with her open palmed right hand, forcing him back a few feet. Like his father, the blow barely stung him. Coming at her again, he faked a left before snapping his arm back and extending his right leg. The move caught her slightly off guard but she managed to duck under his leg and push his calf, knocking him slightly off balance.

They were evenly matched in strength and agility, but she had the upper hand when it came to experience and grace. Her movements weren't wasted; she didn't exert herself more than necessary. He tended to put too much effort into a move that did warrant the exertion. Hoping to help with that problem, she caught his arm as it came at her and pushed him through the movement faster than he had meant it to flow. The resulting thud his body made on the mat satisfied an internal part of her that loved to win fights.

Breathing hard, he leapt from the floor and immediately crouched into a low fighting position. She had noticed that he preferred low ground when he fought. Having watched him spar with Angel and Will, Buffy had been able to learn his preferred movements, which gave her another considerable advantage. Connor hadn't had the chance the watch her move or work; she had been too pregnant to spar until a few days ago.

Taking him down again, she wasn't ready for the sweeping of his legs and the twirling of his body that quickly manifested into a sharp kick to the back of her knee caps. Landing hard, the air left her lungs as he grabbed her arm and lifted her from the mat, flipping her through the air. Before she could twist her body in the proper direction, she hit the mat again.

Knowing that she had landed badly, she tried to stay calm as a few terrifying seconds passed when she couldn't get air into her lungs. Finally managing to suck in a desperate breath, she put her hand to her chest and looked at a stricken Connor. Frozen to the spot he was in when he had thrown her, he looked at her in horror, afraid to move or speak.

A small smile crossed her lips. "I'm rusty." Picking herself up, she assured him she was alright. "I fell wrong. I know better than that." Positioning herself in a defensive position, she crooked her finger at him. "Again."

Swallowing hard, Connor looked at her with skepticism. "Don't tell Angel."

Smiling, a mischievous light came to her eyes as she switched to the offensive and started mercilessly attacking every weak point she had observed over the past few months. Stepping back for a few moments to allow her sparring partner to catch his breath, she released a throaty laugh before releasing another volley of side kicks and uppercuts.

"Try to keep up, Connor," she said. She was going to enjoy getting back to her calling, she thought.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Breathing hard, Dawn sat down on the rubber-made container that held her winter clothing and frowned. Eying Will with a deadly stare, she watched him carefully put down a box marked 'fragile.' Leaning against the countertop, he looked at her with raised eyebrows.

"What's that look for?"

"If we had gotten divorced, I wouldn't have had to pack all this crap. And I wouldn't have had to move all the packed crap to your place and then unpack it."

"No one forced you to move in."

"I'm not moving in!" She snapped, "I'm putting stuff here. Drawer, remember? I'm keeping my apartment."

Putting his hands up in a movement meant to signal surrender, he nodded and left the room. Returning with another box, he set it on the counter and closed the apartment door. "That's the last of it, love. You are officially keeping some stuff at my place."

"Great. Now I can officially unpack." Standing, she stretched her tired muscles. She had been packing slowly for days, but the move itself had taken place in one hurried rush.

They had tried to move quickly, they didn't want to be caught in the act by anyone that they didn't want knowing about their relationship, which was everyone. They had packed up both his and her car and driven to his apartment, unloading everything in one fell swoop. Pulling clothes out of her suitcase, she carefully hung everything on hangers and started color coordinating the closet as she put her things in it.

Will's jaw dropped as he watched the monstrous things she was doing to his closet. Gritting his teeth, he left the bedroom and went into the kitchen to start unloading the few kitchen essentials she had thought he lacked. Putting her favorite mugs and oversized cereal bowls into the cabinets, he smiled to himself. He was happy, he realized.

Glancing behind him and into the bedroom, he smirked at Dawn as she talked to herself and the clothing. When she turned the right way, he could read her lips enough to know that she was complaining about the horrible state of his closet and was vowing to install organizing units. Snickering under his breath, he tried to tell himself that she could do whatever she wanted.

In truth, he was slightly nervous. He loved her, he knew that, but rearranging his life was nerve racking. Setting the empty box on the ground, he found another container that held blankets and extra sheets for the bed. Filling the hallway closet with the extra bedding, he tried to arrange the piles neatly so that Dawn would approve. Starting a pile of emptied boxes on the floor, Will stretched his arms above his head.

He was glad Angel would be back from his leave tomorrow, he thought. The new father had been working somewhat out of his home, but the majority of the presidential work had fallen to Will. Knowing he wouldn't miss the job requirements the least bit, Will would happily return to his regular job come morning. Moving on to the small luggage bag containing shampoo and razors and the like, Will set the bag on the bathroom sink; he knew better than to try and place those things.

Walking into the bedroom, he smiled as he slipped his arms around his wife's waist. Nuzzling her neck, he glanced at the closet and smirked. She was crazy in her own way, he thought.

"Is this acceptable?" She knew he was asking about much more than the state of the apartment she was going to be staying in.

Looking over her shoulder at him, she smiled. "I guess I can live with it."

Scoffing, he turned her around and pushed her gently onto the bed. Climbing on top of her, he used his knee to separate her thighs as he kissed her and growled deep in his throat. Putting her arms around him, she smiled into his lips as he kissed her. When he pulled a few inches from her face, she peppered kisses across his neck and jaw.

Holding her to him, he looked into her eyes. "I love you."

Flashing a brilliant smile, she pulled him closer and kissed him deeply. When she decided she needed to breathe again, she pulled away and said, "I love you too."

Rolling over so she was positioned straddling his waste, he sighed contently and rested his hands on her hips. "You are so beautiful."

"I know. Thank you though."

Tickling her, he waited until she shrieked to stop. "You know do you? I don't think you have any idea. You are so beautiful it hurts sometimes, Dawn."

Becoming serious, she leaned her head towards him and kissed him as passionately as she could. Holding him to her, she wondered if she could be happy with this man. He seemed happy with her. Biting his lip playfully, she wondered if what she had with Will could last. Her fear of falling in love, of relinquishing control to another human being, had not disappeared, but it somehow faded when she was with him.

In the past week, they spent quite a bit of time together. When Dawn wasn't helping Buffy with Brady, she was with Will. Even at work, they found time to be together. Making sure they had lunch together, in privacy and secrecy, and meeting for coffee in the morning, had given them time to get to know each other again. Dawn's reluctance to admit they were married had given Will pause for a time, but they had both become more comfortable with the idea over the past week. She had decided to admit that they were married after he had stopped pressuring her to recognize it as fact.

When the phone started ringing, Will released a long list of expletives. Shrugging, she rolled off if him and started to push him out of bed.

"Go answer it."

If his land line had been ringing, he would have ignored it. His cell phone was another matter. Few people had access to that number and he was sure it was some kind of dire emergency as he went to find the device in his coat pocket. Looking at the caller ID, he muttered a curse under his breath.

"I'm a little busy, Angel."

"Yeah, I'm sure. Listen, Fred just called and she and Buffy are going out with the babies. Some kind of baby-outfit torture that I don't want to be involved in. Want to do something?"

Looking behind his shoulder at Dawn, Will winced. "Uh…I really am busy. Like female things busy."

Angel inhaled suddenly. "You two have spending a lot of time together."

"Uh, we have been."

"Is it serious?"

Stifling a noise somewhere between a laugh and groan, Will cleared his throat. "You could say that."

Hearing something in his friends' voice that he didn't like very much, Angel suddenly became very serious. "What aren't you telling me? You have the 'I'm hiding something' voice. What's going on?"

Clearing his throat again, Will suddenly felt as if his collar was too tight. "I can't talk about this right now, Angel."

"Then we'll talk about it in a few hours. Meet me at six." Hanging up the phone before Will could respond, Angel knew that Will would know just where to meet him.

Sighing, Will sat heavily on the couch as Dawn sat next to him with a concerned look on her face. "What was that all about?"

"He wants to know what's going on."

"Well it's none of his damn business!" slapping his arm, she looked at him as if he had done something wrong. "Don't tell him anything! He'll just tell Buffy!"

"Dawn, keeping things from Angel is like trapping Houdini, it really can't be done. He knows we were in Vegas last weekend and that was why we were so late getting to the hospital." At her angry look, he continued quickly, "he knows we're together, Dawn. And I didn't tell him. He asked me where I was and I told him the truth. He figured out that you were with me. This is his business because he's marrying your sister."

"They're getting married? She didn't tell me that."

"They haven't told anybody. But I wouldn't be very good at my job if I didn't figure things out before other people. I've known for months that he wouldn't just knock her up and live with her. He wants a white picket fence, a dog, and two point one children."

Sighing, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back. "He'll tell Buffy and then she'll scream at me and then she'll beat you into a bloody pulp."

"That is a distinct possibility, yes."

Giving him an exasperated look, she rose and muttered about unpacking. Releasing a slow breath, he dragged his hand through his hair and hoped that Angel wouldn't go entirely ballistic.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sighing, Faith looked at the photos of the girls in front of her. The list of sixty-three slayers had grown to an even seventy. Having seen how quickly the project was progressing, Willow had expressed interest in shifting more new slayers to the states. Of the 500 slayers across the world, 425 of them were now affiliated with the council. There were, including the academy in California, five slayer schools. Of the 425 slayers affiliated with the council, 411 of them were enrolled or teaching in schools.

The number of girls associated with The Council and enrolled in schools had grown since the new academy had been announced. Many girls had been unwilling to travel to the other schools for enrollment. The school in London was the largest at the present time, more than a fourth of the slayers were enrolled there. Willow was overseeing two smaller schools in Monaco and Rome. Giles was overseeing not only the London school but the Cleveland school as well.

Faith knew that the enrollment at her academy would grow. Willow had hinted to the idea of moving more girls to California. There were Americans in Europe and in the United Kingdom that wanted to come home to the states but weren't interested in moving to Cleveland. Staring down at the seventy files in front of her, she was trying to sort out living arrangements and class schedules.

The schedule of classes was already set; the professors had met with her in the last week to discuss the layout of the week days and when they would be able to start their classes. None of the slayers had filled out forms concerning classes yet, Willow had suggested they do that a week or so before their arrival. They had, however, filled out forms stating their preferred housing arrangements.

Faith now had the challenge of separating the files into two piles, those that would live in the houses and those that would live in the dormitories. From there, the girls had to he sorted, by personality testing and a few sentences concerning their likes and dislikes, into categories with other girls they might be able to live with. She was ready to tear her hair out over the entire process.

Leaning back, she rubbed her eyes and looked at her cell phone. Connor hadn't called yet. He was supposed to be arranging the housing for the dormitories; Faith had volunteered him to do so. So far, even though she had sent him the information five days ago, he hadn't sent her a single arrangement sheet.

Sighing, she lifted the phone and dialed the number of a person she had come to greatly enjoy the company of. He answered on the third ring.

"Hey there."

"Hey yourself."

She heard him inhale and exhale slowly and she could imagine him relaxing back into his couch as he did so. "What's up?"

"I'm going out of my mind. I have to take a break from this detail shit. Save me from this paperwork."

He laughed and she could see him nodding in her mind's eye. "I'll be there in thirty minutes."

Saying their goodbyes, she stood and stripped her shirt and jeans off, leaving them in a pile in the living room. Going into the bathroom, she dove into the shower and washed her hair in record time. Never before had she cared about impressing someone. He was different, though. She wanted him to think she was pretty. She wanted him to want to be with her.

Drying her hair with one hand, she rubbed lotion on her legs with the other. Her lack of female friends had worked to her disadvantage during the past week. Gunn had taken her to dinner twice during the week and they had gone to the movies on Saturday. Working through nerves every time she had been with him, Faith had wanted to call another woman and ask their advice or simply talk.

Instead, she had called Angel once and Connor once. Angel had been helpful and encouraging, telling her she was beautiful no matter what she wore or how she did her hair. She had listened almost politely to him while she smirked on the other end of the phone. She wanted him to tell her what to do to make Gunn want her; she didn't want a pep talk.

Connor had been more helpful. He had shared what he found sexy in a woman and followed up the list by saying that Faith fit all the criteria and that she should marry him. She had laughed through a refusal. Trying to follow his advice, she had bought lotion that smelled nice and a hair dryer.

Combing through the last of her soft waves of hair, she ran to the bedroom and chose an outfit. Pulling off the first three shirts she put on, she finally found one she approved of just as she realized she hated the jeans she was wearing. Cursing in frustration, she pulled the pants off and quickly looked in the mirror. Wincing, she changed her underwear as well. If they slept together, she thought, she wanted to be wearing sexy panties, not blue and white striped bikinis.

Slipping on black lace underwear and darker jeans, she ran into the living room and grabbed the clothes off the floor as she looked out of the hotel room window. His car was pulling up to the curb. Running back to the bathroom, she put on a sheer lip gloss before wiping it away again. Trying on a darker shade of red, she smiled in the mirror and pulled her hair back.

Disliking that look as well, she frantically wiped the lipstick from her face and pulled the pony tail holder from her hair, glancing at the door as she did so. Rushing through applying mascara and a red gloss to her lips, she ran to the closet and slipped black flats on just as the doorbell rang. Taking a deep breath, she shook her hair out again before skidding to a halt in front of the door. Relaxing her shoulders, she opened the door, looking as if she had just risen from her desk and walked calmly towards the sound of knocking.

"Hi there."

"Hi. You look great."

"Thanks." Taking her cell phone and keys from the desk, she slipped them into a black slouchy purse Fred had given her.

Faith had been assured by the married woman that it was absolutely necessary to carry a purse. Fred had explained that men carried wallets, phones and keys in their pockets. Women had to carry them in a purse so their hips and behinds didn't look larger from all the bulk in their pockets. Faith had thought that rule was odd, and she had never carried a purse before, but Fred was married and had obviously done something right to get to that point. She had taken the bag without further comment.

The greasy spoon they pulled into the small parking lot of made Faith raise her eyebrows at Gunn. After their second date, which had started at a fancy restaurant and ended at a steak house, Gunn had been choosing destinations that he thought would serve Faith's tastes. This however, was a little home-grown even for her.

Laughing, Gunn parked his new pick-up truck. "I used to come to this place all the time. It clogs arteries like no other, but the food is so good you think you've died and gone to cheeseburger heaven. And their fried chicken dinner, with coleslaw and everything, oh, don't get me started."

Laughing at his enthusiasm, she followed him to the window where they ordered before sitting at a picnic bench under an awning.

"This was one of your favorite places?"

"Oh yeah, I use to come here three of four times a week. Living on the street, you learn to get money in different places. None of us knew how to cook, so it isn't like we went to the grocery store when we were young. For a while, we didn't have a place to go at all. It wasn't 'til I hooked up with a crew and we found a place to squat that we could buy food and keep it."

"Suddenly, my life doesn't seem like it was so hard."

"It wasn't that bad, actually. It was hard in the beginning, that's for sure…and the end was pretty hard too. But for a while, we killed a lot of vamps and hung out during the day. It was good for a few years."

Staring down the straw into her soda, she smiled sadly. Hers wasn't the only life that had been hard, she thought. It had taken her a long time to realize that, but she now thought she wasn't alone in a world where only she got screwed. Most people, it seemed to Faith, ended up getting screwed someway or another. She read in the paper, years ago when the old Sunnydale gang had been passing through Denver, about a man who won the lottery but fathered a severely mentally handicapped child the next month. That was how life seemed to Faith sometimes.

Looking back at Gunn, she knew that the man in front of her was one she could respect. He had survived a life many would not have and he had turned into a good man with a good heart. Looking up, she watched as the girl who had taken their order called it out and set two baskets on the window sill.

Gunn rose to get the food, setting the infamous chicken dinner in front of Faith. Smiling and raising his soda to her, she did the same before pouring an unhealthy amount of ketchup over her french-fries. Laughing throughout their simple dinner, Faith let herself relax in Gunn's presence. She hoped this was a man she could be with for some time.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"You did what?" Angel stood, wide eyed and staring at his friend. He wasn't sure he had heard Will properly. "You married Dawn in Vegas?" Trying to keep his voice low, his words came out in a hiss. The waitress passing them raised an eyebrow.

Rubbing his eyes with his hand, Angel shook his head and reached for a cigarette. He hadn't smoked in a long time, but in the bar atmosphere, surrounded by booze and the stench of stale smoke, he felt compelled. Shaking his head, he waited for Will to finish his beer.

"Yeah," Will said, "we got married in Vegas. It was an accident, we were really drunk. But I'm glad it happened. She moved in with me. Not officially, according to her, but she did. We're spending time together. I'm happy. You should be happy for me."

Sighing, Angel resisted the urge to strangle Will. "You are an idiot. Look, I don't want to talk about this and I wish I didn't even know about your past with Buffy, but I need to bring it up. You and my fiancé have a past. A bad one. And now you're married to her sister and she doesn't even know that you guys have been sleeping together for as long as she and I have been! How do you think this is going to go over?"

Nodding, Will looked at the table and pursed his lips. "Well, all that is true. But I love Dawn."

Groaning in frustration, Angel angrily smashed the cigarette into the ashtray. "Talking to you is like trying to convince paint to dry faster. You're impossible. Listen to me. Buffy forgave you for everything that happened in Sunnydale. She likes you. She likes that you're my friend and we can do friend things; she thinks that great. She will not like you banging her little sister!"

Leaning forward angrily, Will spat, "Why are we still talking about this? I'm not going to leave Dawn because Buffy has a problem with us being together. I'm not the person I was when I was with Buffy and I'm not going to hurt Dawn. I love that girl."

"That isn't the point. The point is, you have to tell Buffy eventually. You can't live with Dawn and have babies with Dawn without Buffy noticing! You can't hide this forever. So figure out how you are going to tell her. Soon. The longer this continues, the worse off you are going to be. Do you understand me? If this goes on any longer you are going to lose me as a friend and Buffy is going to lose her sister. Lying about dating is one thing, lying about marriage is a whole new ball game."

Opening a bottle of water and pushing the empty beer bottle to the edge of the table, Will leaned back in his chair and tried to digest what Angel was trying to convey to him. "Dawn isn't ready to tell Buffy. She didn't want me to tell you."

"Too bad. Tell her to get over it. When Buffy finds out, fireworks on New Years Eve are going to seem like backyard sparklers! This is going to be World War Three, you fool. Buffy will never forgive you two for lying all this time and she'll never forgive me for keeping this from her. Tell her, soon, or I will."

Leaning back, Angel looked at Will with determination on his face. He needed the younger man to know he was serious. Angel told himself that there was no way he was going to keep something this important from Buffy. He was not prepared to jeopardize his relationship with his soon-to-be wife because Dawn was ashamed to tell her sister about her new marriage. Buffy would skin him alive and then dump him for keeping such a thing from her. Looking at his rather peeved friend, Angel sipped the diet soda that had been in front of him for twenty minutes.

"I don't like you." Sighing, Will took another sip of his drink. "I get it though. You knowing means you're a double agent. I'll talk to Dawn tonight but there's no guarantee she'll want to spill."

"She doesn't have a choice. If it was anyone else, Will, that Dawn had secretly eloped with, Buffy would be upset but not insane. This is you. It's very different. She'll see this as you seducing her sister and her being kept in the dark. You would have been better off to be honest from the beginning."

"Yeah I know. I'll talk to her." Standing with a heavy sigh, Will put a twenty on the table and left the bar with Angel close on his heels. He was done with this conversation and couldn't stand the idea of Angel lecturing him anymore.

Getting into their respective vehicles, Will watched Angel leave the parking lot before turning towards his apartment and most likely irate wife. Parking, he sat at the curb for a few minutes before getting up the nerve to go inside. He had a small speech prepared but knew there was little likelihood he would be able to deliver it.

She was sitting on the couch, her feet curled under her and a bowl of popcorn in front of her. Looking at him as he came through the door, her eyes narrowed dangerously. "How did it go?"

"I told him. He knew something was up." Sighing, he hung his coat up on the rack and turned to his wife. "Dawn, he has to tell Buffy if we don't. He can't lie to her. And we shouldn't either. Let's just tell her."

Dawn's jaw fell to the floor at the same time the bowl of popcorn did. "You're insane. How do you think she'll respond, Will?"

"She's going to be angrier about being lied to than about who you married!"

Standing, Dawn picked the popcorn bowl up from the floor and slammed it on the coffee table before huffing her way into the kitchen. "She's going to be so mad…Will, this is my life and I should decide who I marry! She doesn't get a choice in that! I don't want to deal with all this drama!"

Following closely on her heels, Will tried to keep his voice below the level of a yell. "We created the drama! This is our fault. We shouldn't have hidden this for this long. If you want to have a sister, Dawn, you'll tell her!"

Hearing those words, Dawn turned to him with teary eyes and slapped him. The resounding crack filled the kitchen as Dawn tried to stifle her crying. "She's my sister. She loves me. Nothing could take that away."

Licking his lips, he nodded acquiescence and bit back his anger. "I'm sorry. I know that. What I'm saying, Dawn, is that Buffy is going to be hurt that we didn't trust her enough to tell her about this. She is going to be very upset and I think she might not talk to either of us for a long time. Keeping her in the dark is more detrimental to your relationship than just telling her."

"She'll want me to leave you!"

Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her close and kissed her head. Smoothing her hair with his hands, he shook his head. "No, she won't do that. Once she sees how much we love each other, she'll be happy. She'll be hurt at first, Dawn, but she'll get over it. The longer we wait, though, the worse it will be."

Nodding into his chest, she pulled away and rubbed her eyes. "I don't like being forced into things. I'll…I'll tell her, though. I'll talk to her. I'll go there tonight. I guess there's no sense in waiting any longer if Angel's going to tell her anyway."

"It isn't fair to put him in that position. Besides that Dawn, it's the right thing to do. We have to come clean." Looking into her eyes, Will realized that Dawn was less than happy with the situation.

Sighing heavily, Dawn left to clean the popcorn from the floor and Will stared thoughtfully into a sink of dirty dishwater. It was a few hours before either of them wanted to talk to each other again. The night passed as the couple spoke in monosyllables and tried to avoid eye contact with each other. Neither person wanted to contemplate the idea of speaking with the slayer.

Looking out over the dark sky, Dawn hugged a knit wrap around herself and leaned her head against the window frame of the bedroom. She could hear Will padding through the kitchen with bare feet, probably making more coffee. There was paper work that he still needed to finish before Angel returned to the office in the morning. Closing her eyes, she listened to the traffic below.

When she listened harder, she could hear leaves rustling in the garden to the left of the apartment. Sucking in a shaking breath and trying to keep herself from panicking, Dawn tried to ignore that she was going to half to talk to her sister soon. Looking at the clock, she sighed before lifting her cell phone. Shaking fingers dialed a number she knew by heart and she waited with bated breath for someone to answer the phone.

Allowing herself a slight smile at Connor's breezy greeting, she asked to speak with her sister. Part of her wanted to be a coward and have the imminent conversation on the phone, but she knew that would be unforgivable. Steadying her nerves, she spoke to Buffy for only a few moments before asking her sister to have lunch with her the following day.

The hesitation on the other end of the phone made Dawn wince. "Dawn, what's wrong? You're all avoidant and nervous. You didn't steal a pendant that raises a murderous demon again did you?"

Hearing the attempted humor in Buffy's voice, Dawn calmed herself a little and smiled wider. "I just need to talk to you. No singing demons involved, I promise."

After securing a lunch date with her sister and taking a deep breath, Dawn wrapped the hooded shawl closer to herself and curled into a ball on the queen size bed. Facing her sister's disapproval was more frightening than she wanted to admit to herself. Throughout the years apart, separated by more than continents, Dawn had come to crave the sisterly bond that had been thriving in the past year. Putting that bond in danger was terrifying; Buffy was one of the very few family members Dawn had left.

Looking into the bedroom, Will swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. Being tough and hard was easier than feeling what he was feeling. Defending his company and the lives of the people he cared about seemed infinitely simpler than defending his love for his wife. Swallowing his pride, he wished that Dawn would allow him to accompany her to lunch with Buffy.

He felt as though he was abandoning Dawn, but he knew that she wanted to tell Buffy alone. Dawn was afraid that Buffy would feel ganged up on if they both went to lunch with her. Sighing quietly, he pulled the covers over Dawn and slipped out of his own clothes before sliding beneath the cool sheets and next to his wife. Turning the night table light off, Will turned to the woman sleeping next to him and put his arm over her. It was a long time before sleep claimed him.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Smiling, Faith stretched lazily and buried her head deeper into Gunn's arm. Her smile widened when he kissed the top of her head. Dragging her fingertips lazily over his chest, she stopped briefly to tease his nipple. In a fit of laughter, he grabbed her and rolled her onto her back; she allowed him to flip her onto her back and tickle her for a few seconds.

Smiling into the crook of her neck, Gunn relaxed next to her while propping himself on his elbow. "That was phenomenal."

"I know." The cocky smile that spread across her face was quickly replaced with surprised glee when Gunn started to push her off the bed.

After a few seconds of yelling for him to stop, Gunn climbed out of bed and lifted her into his arms. "I'm stealing you away. You're going to be mine forever."

"If by forever you mean for the next few minutes. We have to go to work."

"I'm too happy to work. Let's stay in bed all day and make love."

Gently pulling herself from his grasp, she looked over shoulder and raised her eyebrows at him while she made her way to the shower. The lack of covering across her rounded backside enticed Gunn to follow her into the bathroom.

In a fit of happiness, Faith let herself feel with reckless abandon that she had previously only reserved for stealing and slaying. After many wonderful minutes, Faith finally turned off the steaming water and stepped from the shower. Wrapping towels around her hair and then around her body, she followed Gunn into the bedroom.

Their late night dinner had led to a night cap at Gunn's apartment which led to an early morning sunrise session of love making. Frowning at her slinky black top and sleek leather pants that looking surprisingly non-trashy according to Dawn, Faith realized that it was probably going to be a good idea for her to have a drawer at Gunn's apartment.

Slipping the clothes on, she gave Gunn a look that he interpreted as meaning that they would have to stop at her apartment in order for her to change. He had driven them around town last night, which meant that she would either have to go in to the office with him or pick up her car.

Watching Gunn knot his tie, Faith untangled her hair with her fingers. "You think Angel will be in on time?"

"Isn't he always? I bet he's raring to go and ready to get back to it. Staying at home was never his style. Having a bouncing baby boy is great, but he needs to save the world to feel fulfilled."

"I get that, though. I need that too. I mean, I don't think I could ever do what Buffy's doing."

Grinning widely, Gunn picked up his keys and started Faith from the apartment as they spoke. "You don't a kid and a big house?"

"I don't think I'm the mothering kind. I can't even hold Brady without breaking into a cold sweat," she said laughing slightly and bumping Gunn's side playfully.

"I think you'd look good with a baby."

"Don't get any ideas, champ."

Closing the door to the car, Faith leaned back and turned the radio on. The quiet music in the background distracted her from the fact that she was seriously discussing having babies with anyone.

"Faith, I don't want kids, especially right now. My career is going well, I love my job, I have great friends. If I want a baby, I can baby-sit Angel's. I'm sure he's going to have a whole clan with Buffy. Don't worry, girl, no pressure from me."

"Good. Because I don't want kids. The whole birth thing? Not my style."

Laughing, Gunn relaxed in his seat, enjoying the remainder of the ride to Faith's apartment in peaceful silence. He doubted he would want to be a father at any time soon, and he was sure Faith was in no hurry to settle down and start driving a mini-van. He startled himself with that thought; he was amazed he could consider Faith in such serious manner. Shaking himself a little, he glanced across the car at the stunning brunette and grinned. She was perfect, he thought. No other woman had been so honest, brutally so at times, and yet so sensual and sensitive. Gunn was amazed at her ability to be a hardened warrior and a wonderful lover all at the same time.

Parking outside Faith's apartment, he waited patiently in his double parked space as Faith went to change into more suitable clothes for the office. When she returned to the car wearing black slacks and a light blue button down, Gun smiled. The Faith of yesteryear would have stayed in the same slinky top and dared people to comment about it. This Faith would still kick ass, Gunn thought, but she wouldn't pick a fight as readily.

The drive to the office was quiet, Faith yawned a few times, which was Gunn's cue to stop at the nearest drive-thru for coffee. Arriving at the office about an hour later than he normally did, Gunn waggled his eyebrows at Faith as she exited the elevator for her floor. He was in a good mood. She laughed and shoved his arm playfully at his lewd facial expressions.

It was early for Faith to be in the office. Sliding into her chair, she sighed and picked up the first file lying on her desk. Updates of building progress and photos of the expanded grounds were scattered around her office. Budget approvals had to be signed; dormitory decorations had to be decided upon. Faith was adamant that she would not be the one to choose the decorating styles of the dorms. Dawn would have to be consulted, she decided.

Leaning back in her chair, she looked at a yellow post it note she hadn't noticed earlier. It was stuck to the underside of a file she had just unearthed. The numbers written on it made no sense to her, she didn't recognize it as a phone number she knew or as a code to anything she could recall. Staring at it a few minutes, she lifted her phone and dialed the seven numbers, hoping that her hunch would pay off.

The raspy voice at the other end of the line didn't start with any preamble. "Come alone." The voice stated an address and before Faith could say a word, whoever or whatever, she thought, had hung up.

Standing slowly, she made a decision within a few seconds. The elevator was crowded but no one else was going to the sub-levels. She was the only one on the elevator by the time it reached the parking garage. Signing out a key with the security desk that few people had reason to use, she started one of Angel's SUVs and pulled up the ramp and into the sunlight.

Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, she drove the forty-five minute drive through the city and into the historic district. Traffic was awful for the time of day, Faith mused, she would have been there sooner if not for the smog congested streets. It was not the first time Faith had missed night time travel. Traffic was always better at two in the morning, she thought wryly. Meeting creepy voices in the middle of the morning was not her style.

Parking the car on the street, Faith wasted no time in scouting the building. The small corner store was as unassuming as it was dilapidated. Shingled hung from the roof and painted concrete walls peeled like dead skin. Thanking the powers that she hadn't chosen to impress Gunn by wearing the only pair of stilettos she owned, she started up the stairs to the stoop in leather ankle boots, her hands in her pockets.

The door opened of its own accord and Faith smiled thinly. This was going to be interesting, she thought. The raspy telephone voice called to her from a darkened corner of the back of the front room. Counter tops were covered with white sheets; a thick layer of dust covered every surface.

Her shoes left impressions in the dust. The thin beam of sunlight coming through the boarded up window illuminated the dancing dust particles in the air. Fighting the urge to sneeze, Faith straightened her back almost imperceptibly and started towards the voice.

As the figure came into view, she gasped at the hideousness of the being. What was once a man, she thought, was now an abomination of a human being. His scaly and scarred skin had grooves in it that she could loose her finger in. Parts of the flesh on his head were pealing like the paint outside on the building.

"I'm glad you're here."

Nodding, she kept quiet. Trying not to listen to her instincts, which were telling her to run as fast as she could, she stayed silent and still.

The creature laughed and she saw sharp and pointed teeth, less than there should have been, that were rotting green and brown. His breath reeked worse than the rest of him. Biting back a surge of nausea, Faith looked in his eyes, her obvious disgust written on her face.

"Being with the champion and his ilk has softened you. Pathetic. You were once a great warrior."

Taking a deep breath, she spoke calmly. "I can kill you now and put you out of your obvious misery or you can tell me why you wanted me here. Your call."

His laughter died abruptly as a grunt escaped his lips. "I wanted to give you a warning."

Her raised eyebrow was enough to prompt him to continue. She wanted to speak as little as possible since she was trying to breathe as little as possible. The stench was incredible.

"The tests are not yet over. You will never be safe. None of you will ever be safe."

Suddenly angry, she snapped at him, "That's it? That's all you had to say, because that is pathetic. Thanks for the update on that." Turning to leave, his voice stopped her.

"Wait. Wait. Don't be so hasty. You can't hurry towards death."

Opening her mouth to speak, she was suddenly unable to speak. The floor beneath her opened and before she could make a sound, swallowed her whole. The hideous creature's laughter was the last sound she heard as the darkness pulled at her.


	7. Chapter 7

I apologize for the absurdly long wait for this installment. I have the next chapter finished, I am editing it now. Thank you for your patience and I hope I still have some readers out there!

Chapter 7

Something was up, she thought. There was some kind of ulterior motive and she wasn't sure she wanted to know what it was. She had left Brady with Fred, joking about infants having play dates; there was no reason to bring her baby to what was sure to be a tension filled lunch. Drumming her fingers impatiently on the glass tabletop, Buffy wondered why Dawn had insisted they go out for lunch. Buffy was suspicious any time any one insisted on being in a public space, especially when the person was Dawn and she 'wanted to talk.' That statement had alerted Buffy that Dawn was in some kind of trouble.

Angel had left early, obviously tired, but determined to get back to saving the world. She had been reluctant to admit it, but she enjoyed having Angel all to herself. As selfish as she thought it was, she couldn't help but miss that he wasn't going to be with her all day. Even Brady seemed to miss Angel after he had left.

Sipping her ice tea, she fought back a sigh and forced herself to be calm. Whatever had happened, or was going to happen, she and Dawn would figure it out. They always had. Snickering a little at the memories of Dawn and her antics as a younger woman, Buffy carefully controlled her features when she saw Dawn starting to approach the table.

Standing, Buffy enveloped her sister in a tight hug. "Hey, Dawnie."

Smiling tightly, Dawn sat down and ordered a mimosa. Pointedly ignoring Buffy's incredulous look, she accepted the menu from the waitress and buried her eyes in it.

"A little early to be drinking, isn't it?"

"It's five o'clock somewhere," Dawn mumbled.

Forcing herself to relax in her chair, Buffy toyed with the ice cubes in her tea and waited for Dawn to start speaking. This was her sister's show and Buffy didn't want to rush whatever revelation was coming.

Swallowing hard, Dawn waited for her drink. When the waitress brought it, she quickly ordered another one, downing half the drink in one gulp. After both women had ordered their lunches, Dawn finished the other half of the orange liquid.

Buffy raised her eyebrows but kept quiet. Dawn seemed to be very intently studying the passing people on the sidewalk. The outdoor area of the restaurant was sunny and colored in calming blues and greens. The awning of the building overhead and the concrete beneath their feet provided enough of a cooling effect to prevent overheating of the patrons. Buffy wondered if Dawn had chosen this place because she knew Buffy enjoyed it.

Without breaking eye contact from the spot of concrete on the sidewalk she had chosen to focus on, Dawn took a deep breath and started, "I have something important to tell you. You have to swear not to get mad or start screaming."

"Is that why we're here? So I can't make a scene? Trust me Dawnie, I am not above public embarrassment."

"It's not funny Buffy!" Her head snapped towards her sister as their salads were set in front of them.

Pushing a mandarin orange around her plate, Dawn pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. Seeing that expression, Buffy was certain that whatever Dawn was about to say was very bad. Stealing herself for news of an accidental homicide or pregnancy, either of which would have been equally bad Buffy thought, she chewed silently. Dawn stabbed a walnut angrily.

"I don't think the salad is making you mad. Talk to me Dawn and stop punishing the innocent nuts."

That got a small smile on Dawn's face. "Okay." Looking up at her sister, she took a deep breath. "I've been seeing someone and no one knows about it. It's really serious."

Buffy's shoulders sagged as relief flooded through her. "That's it? You wanted to tell me you're serious with someone? Dawn, that's great! I mean, I wish I would have met the guy earlier, but still, I'm happy for you." Seeing the look on Dawn's face, Buffy paused and winced. "You're pregnant, aren't you? You and serious guy are pregnant."

Dawn's fork clattered to the plate. "N-N-No…" she stuttered, "No, I'm, we're, not pregnant. God no."

Trying not to take offense to the look of distaste on her sister's face, Buffy didn't try and hide the confusion written on her own features. "Well, what's wrong, then?"

Taking a long drink of the second mimosa in front of her, Dawn swallowed hard. "We went to Vegas and got really drunk. I didn't mean to do it, Buffy. I never meant to hurt you and you can't disown me for it. You have to accept it because you're my sister and you love me. So, um…we got married in Vegas."

Buffy's jaw dropped as Dawns' words spilled from her mouth in one long sentence. Finding herself too shocked to answer, she watched Dawn delicately put a piece of lettuce and orange in her mouth. Finally able to move her mouth, Buffy took a deep breath and licked her suddenly dry lips.

"Are you going to stay married?"

"Yes. We are."

Before Buffy could respond with her request to meet her new brother in law, her cell phone rang. Looking at the caller I.D. in annoyance, Buffy flipped the phone open. No one called her from Wolfram and Hart unless it was an emergency. Anything less than an emergency interrupting their conversation, she vowed, would end in someone in losing a limb.

She answered tartly, but regretted it as soon as Gunn spoke. "What do you mean she hasn't been seen in hours?"

"She left a couple of hours ago, took a company car, no one has seen her since. I've called her about twenty times, no answer. Where would she go?"

"Are the cars lo-jacked?"

She heard the sound of Gunn typing as she waited on the other end. After a few moments, he said, "Yeah, the one she took was. Angel's aren't, he forbids it, but she took a general company car, anyone in the firm can rent it out."

"Okay, give me an address and I'll meet you there."

Scribbling the address on a napkin, she closed the phone and started to pull bills out of her wallet. "Gunn's worried about Faith, she hasn't returned his calls for a few hours. I'm meeting him to try and find her."

Slightly offended that her sister was leaving her so suddenly and for something so unimportant, Dawn didn't keep the edge of anger from her voice. "I'm sure she's fine. You know Faith, maybe she just needed a little alone time."

"Yeah I know, but Gunn sounds haywire, I need to calm him down. Do you recognize this address?"

Studying the napkin, Dawn tried to recall if the address was one she was familiar with. "I've never been there; I don't think it's in any files I've read. As far as I know, Wolfram and Hart doesn't have any business there, but I wouldn't be the right person to ask."

Nodding, Buffy stood, "We'll talk later, okay? Just…um…call me later today and we'll figure all this out."

As Buffy walked to her car, she was almost glad that she and Dawn had been interrupted. As she left, she heard her sister order two more drinks and a cab from the waitress. Her head was swimming. Dawn, her little sister, was married before she was. Admonishing her selfishness, Buffy mentally shook herself. Thanking whatever higher power was listening that Faith had chosen that moment to disappear for some alone time, she turned the car towards the historic district.

Turning her mind to happier thoughts, she pictured her baby in her mind's eye. By the time she had reached the address on the napkin, she had almost managed to forget that Dawn had married some mysterious man while drunk in Las Vegas.

Waving to Gunn, she stepped up to the small store, wrinkling her nose in disgust. The building smelled like urine, the paint was peeling in long stripes down the concrete. Standing in front of the doorway with Gunn, Buffy's feeling about Faith leaving for some personal time suddenly started to wane.

Gunn's face was crestfallen as they stood outside what should have been a condemned building. She was sure that he had hoped that Faith had left for some business related to the slayer school. The location of the car, which was parked just in front of Gunn's SUV, proved different. There was no reason Buffy could possible fathom that could bring Faith to this place. Taking a deep breath, Buffy thought wryly that her day was just getting better and better.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Cracking his knuckles, Angel stretched his arms above his head. Will had been a bundle of nerves all morning. Trying to eat lunch with his friend had been almost as nerve wracking as taking a prostitute to a nun convention, he thought. All Will wanted to talk about was how Buffy was going to react to Dawn's news they were married.

Gunn had left a short time ago, saying something about not being able to reach Faith. Angel had tried to offer assistance but Gunn had politely told him that he could handle it and had left to find his girlfriend. No one but Gunn seemed at all worried about the slayer; Angel knew that Faith often disappeared for a short time to clear her head.

Wandering the halls of the office had bored him after a few minutes. Will had been keeping up with the work while Angel was gone; there was no great build up of things for him to do. Wandering, perusing the offices and checking in on the underlings seemed the most productive thing he could do.

Knocking on Wes's door, Angel smiled slightly at his friend before letting himself in. Seating himself in the overstuffed chair in front of the conference table, he fixed Wesley with a glare that would have melted lesser men.

Wes looked surprised and annoyed all at the same time. "What have I done to warrant that?"

"I was traveling the hallways, just thinking, you know. And I suddenly thought about Xander. He's on the executive board now but he still has to check in once and a while, right? I mean, he can't just disappear because he knows we'd worry. He hasn't talked to Will and there would be no reason he'd call Gunn, so that leaves one option. You know where he is, don't you?"

Sighing heavily, Wes leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips for a moment before answering. "Yes, I know where he is. He's taking some personal time. Why does it matter?"

"It matters because I looked at his expenditure file today and his flight log has me a little concerned. We haven't sent him to Chicago and yet he's been there quite a bit."

"Aw, yes, Chicago. He goes there on his personal trips; it has nothing to do with Wolfram and Hart. So…it wasn't on his flight logs." Wesley gave Angel an accusing stare.

"It was on his credit care bills."

"Not the company ones."

Pausing, Angel tried to continue his look of intimidation. "Maybe not."

Genuinely shocked, Wesley looked wide eyed at his friend. "You looked at his personal credit card bills? Angel, that is completely immoral. The man has a right to privacy."

Ignoring Wesley's tone of voice, he continued undeterred. "Why was he spending so much at fancy restaurants?"

"I am not continuing this conversation with you. It is based on deceit and stolen credit card bills."

Sighing, Angel leaned back and let his face drop. He had been suspicious for some time, but Wesley's inability to answer his questions confirmed his beliefs. Xander was traveling to Chicago on a regular basis; in fact, he had spent quite a bit of time there since before Brady's birth. Angel had found a plane ticket receipt saved on Xander's office computer that proved he was in Chicago when Buffy gave birth.

"He's with her, isn't he? There old flame rekindled, huh?"

Rubbing his eyes, Wesley wondered why Angel was so interested in a possible romance between Xander and Cordelia. Surely, Wesley thought, the man held no feelings for his old seer. He was firmly with Buffy, they had a child together, Wesley reasoned.

"Angel, why do you care about her so much? Wait, wait, I don't mean it like that. I mean, why do you care about her dating habits so much. Not that I am confirming that they're dating. I just wonder what your concern is."

"I just want to make sure she's okay. They don't have the best history, you know."

"Neither do you and Buffy! Or have you conveniently forgotten that? Let them alone, Angel. You are no longer her big brother or boyfriend or even best friend. She is moving on and trying to find a new path in life. If Xander is on that path, let them be together and happy. Don't go rushing into this half cocked and crazed with misplaced jealousy."

Staring at Wesley, Angel wasn't sure he had heard the man correctly. "She was never my girlfriend, first of all. Second of all, I am not jealous. I am concerned for her well being. I want her to be happy. Just…not with him, per se."

"You are really unbelievable. I mean, truly. What are you going to do, forbid her from seeing them? And why, Angel? Why can't she see him?"

"Because I don't want her to!" he snapped. "She hasn't seen anyone since Groo and I didn't like him either. She has shitty taste in men."

"You didn't like Groo because you wanted to be with her. You were jealous you couldn't have her because you two never fell in love. Get over it. You were best friends for a long time and that maybe led to some confusing feelings, but you said it yourself, you were never her boyfriend. You didn't even date. You can't be jealous."

"I'm not jealous of her romantically. I don't want to be with her in that sense. I just want…I want us to be as close as we were. That's all."

Sighing, he leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, "you two will never be that close again Angel. It can't happen. You haven't known each other for years, and she wants a new life. You'll always care about her, but you have to let go. She isn't your only life line anymore, you know."

Swallowing hard, Angel stood and nodded before turning on his heels and leaving the office. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he took the long way to his own office. The stair well was quiet and the climb up the few flights of stairs allowed him time to think. Perhaps, he conceded to himself, he was holding on too tightly to past relationships. Friendships came and went, he knew that.

People all around him had died for a long time. He had lost many people he had come to care about. Cordy wasn't dead, he told himself, she was living a different life. He had other friends now, or life lines, as Wes put it. He told himself that he could get over the pain that her rejection caused him.

Laughing at himself he wondered why her rejection hurt him so much. They had never been romantic; he had cared about her very deeply, perhaps he had a crush on her, but they had never moved past the point of friendship. He was glad for that. Yet he felt the sting of rejection as if a lover had abandoned him.

He told himself that was because they had been so close emotionally. They had been dating, if only through their emotional connection. Sighing, he pushed thoughts of Cordy and Xander from his mind as he nodded to his secretary.

Pulling the door to his office open, his mind shut down. The heat that exploded towards him was followed closely by a white hot flame. His flight through the air came to a halt when he hit the far wall, the air being sucked from his lungs. He could feel his ribs crack as the door to his office hit his chest a second after his back hit the wall.

Screams could be heard around him and he felt his shirt stick to his skin as the fabric melted and burned. Trying to suck in a lung full of air, he only inhaled what felt like molten lava. The heated air singed his mouth, throat and lungs and his ribs screamed at the indignity of being made to move.

Pushing the door off of himself, he slapped at the flames burning through his shirt and onto his arm as he tried to take stock of the damage. His vision swam as he realized that the lobby was burning and no sprinklers were coming on. Trying desperately to breath, he moved to stand as a sharp pain tore through him.

Looking down at his abdomen, he winced when he saw a metal shard from what could have been a piece of furniture in his office. The hole in the door confirmed to his brain a second later what his body already knew. The metal rod had sailed through the wooden door and was lodged securely inside of him.

Putting his hands around the quickly spreading blotch of blood, he managed to slide back to the floor. Closing his eyes against the unyielding heat, he managed to think of Buffy one last time before loosing consciousness.

Lying on the floor near the row of elevators, Angel's chest movements slowed. The two sides of his chest moved unevenly, the broken ribs floating underneath his skin. The door lay on his leg, which was bleeding profusely. His abdominal wound seeped blood, covering his shirt quickly and flowing downwards to be absorbed by his pants. What his clothing couldn't absorb pooled around his body.

The flames spread throughout the lobby, orange tongues licked at him, burning his flesh and his clothes. As his skin started to char and the smell of burnt flesh from over a dozen dead people wafted throughout the fiery volcanic tomb, Angel's lungs stopped moving. There were no more screams, no more breaths, from anyone consumed by the blast.


	9. Chapter 9

This fourth installment of this series will be the last one. I hope that I can end the series in a way that will make everyone happy, but I think there should be more strife first. There will be a prequels I think, very short ones, and maybe a few epilogues, but this is the last book for the arc. I appreciate everyone who has read the series, it has done my soul good to commit it to paper. Thank you all, and don't stop reading until the end, I think you'll be satisfied!

Chapter 9

Emergency crews raced through the halls, someone on the other end of the phone screamed above the noise about the sprinkler system on that floor. Wesley held a piece of his torn shirt to his bleeding head as he shut his cell phone. He had wasted no time in climbing the stairs to Angel's floor to find his friend. The explosion that had devastated that floor had rocked the entire building.

Covering his mouth with another piece of his shirt, he winced at the sight of the floor directly beneath the one Angel was still trapped on. Two floors below that and the two floors above it had been wrought with devastation. Even two floors below, Wesley had felt the blast. He had watched from his wall of windows as glass shards rained down from the sky above. The force of the blast had sent glass into the far reaches of surrounding streets and parking lots.

The subsequent shaking of the building had almost paralyzed Wesley with fear for a moment. The two book shelves behind him that were not connected to the wall had come down just as he had come to his senses. His bleeding head was evidence that he had not moved quick enough.

Watching people in yellow flame retardant overalls run past him, Wesley took a deep breath against the rancid smell of burning flesh that was wafting throughout the stairwell. Stealing himself for the worst, he continued upwards towards the ground zero of the explosion.

The building was being evacuated. People were streaming past him as he followed rescue workers upwards. The reaction had been swift, technicians had quickly started to repair the sabotaged sprinkler system, and it was on within a few minutes. Medics had been sent to the floor to recover the wounded and every doctor on their payroll had been called in to tend to them once they had been moved to the med-lab.

Those that did not require specialized attention, the humans, would be taken to surrounding hospitals. Four ambulances were already pulling into the parking lot, along with half a dozen news crews. Words like terrorists and sabotage were being thrown around but Wesley could not focus on the screams and ranting of the people passing him. He had to find Angel.

He froze at the site of the lobby. The flames were under control but the smoldering wreckage was still hot. Screams could be heard between rescue workers, and from what Wesley could gather, they hadn't found any living survivors yet. Swallowing the bile in his throat, he ignored the smells and sights around him.

He almost fell to his knees when a large charred wooden plank was lifted from the ground. Frantic yelling came from the two men lifting the board and another two men with a back board and a large red medical box were by their side almost instantaneously. Stealing himself, he picked his way carefully through the ravaged floor, taking care to avoid a few random body parts lying on the ground.

Angels' unconscious form was rolled gently onto his side and the backboard was slipped underneath him. They were being careful not to disturb the metal barb protruding through his torso. A medic yelled for the others to clear just as the neck brace was strapped in place. Angel's chest jerked upwards and Wes felt himself loosing his knees.

One man checked for a pulse as a female medic charged the defibrillator paddles again. Angels' chest jerked once more as the charged paddles were touched to his skin. In frustration, all four people gathered their instruments quickly and lifted the board with Angels' prone form on it.

Wes followed them down the stairwell to the nearest floor that had a service elevator that was still capable of working. Ignoring their requests for him to leave the elevator, he pressed the appropriate button and watched as they shocked Angel again. The woman was squeezing a blue bag attached to a mask that was over Angel's nose and mouth. The third medic was doing compressions as the paddles were charged. The fourth was frantically trying to start an intravenous line in Angel's hand. She was able to do so just before the first medic yelled for them all to clear.

They could find no heart beat as they lifted the board and set it on the gurney that was waiting on the floor of the med-lab. Angel was wheeled down the hallway, the four medics and two doctors running along side the gurney. Two nurses and the head doctor were waiting in the emergency station.

The portable X-ray machine was brought in as Wesley secreted himself against the far wall and watched his friend shocked three more times. One woman in white called out a number. Wesley's sluggish brain interpreted. It had been eleven minutes since he had been found. Angel's odds were worsening by the second.

A doctor yelled that his airway was almost swollen completely closed. He inserted a tube into Angel's lungs through his throat and started to squeeze a new bag that was attached to this tube. A nurse took over quickly.

An intravenous line was perfusing into his arm as another nurse hung a bag of blood and quickly switched the clear liquid for the thicker blood. One doctor was stabilizing his leg as they called for all to clear one last time.

This time, a hastily connected heart monitor started beeping. A doctor called out that he had found a pulse. Wesley felt relief and nausea spread through his body. Angel's leg started to bleed again, the now pumping veins and arteries sending gushes of blood from the deep laceration.

His leg was bandaged quickly, just enough to stop the bleeding. Hanging another bag of blood, nurses started stuffing wads of gauze around large puncture wound in Angel's middle. Doctors were calling out about lung sounds and pedal pulses. Wesley couldn't keep track of it fast enough.

The gurney was moving before Wesley registered it. It was seconds before Angel was being transferred to an operating table, nurses cutting away his clothes as he was moved. Doctors inserted tubes and lines and electrodes throughout and on his body as Wesley watched through the glass windows.

He was lead on shaky legs to a gurney sitting in the hallway. Sitting down heavily, he allowed a nurse to clean his wound as someone else stitched it. They kept reminding him to keep his head straight; Wesley kept turning to look in the direction of the surgery room.

Swallowing hard, he pulled from their hands as soon as he felt they were finished applying bandages. Fumbling through his pockets, he found his cell phone and prepared himself to make the worst call of his life.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Sucking in a sudden breath of air, Buffy double over and grabbed at Gunn to steady herself. Closing her eyes against the sudden pain that had robbed her of air, she tried to stand up straight again as she listened to Gunn calling her name worriedly.

"I'm okay. We have to go."

"What about…"

"Not now." Pulling away from him, all thoughts of Faith and her fate were gone from her mind as she started towards the car.

She didn't know what had happened or if Angel was alright, but she knew she had to get to his side immediately. Something was terribly wrong and it took all her ability to keep from hyperventilating as she stopped at red lights.

Watching her pull away from the curb like a madwoman, Gunn swallowed the lump in his throat. His legs felt like lead; he couldn't move them. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to start up the stoop and into the building. As he pushed open the door, he had to bring his arm up to cover his nose and mouth.

Blinking through the dust, he perused the room slowly. It looked like it was once a shop or something, he thought. A few steps into the room, he stopped moving as his heart seemed to seize. A large red blotch that looked suspiciously like dried blood was in the corner.

Swallowing hard, he took stock of the dark stain on the dusty floor. Focusing more closely, he could see foot prints leading to not very far away from the stain. Imbedded in the deep dust were footprints, almost parallel to his, that were certainly too small to belong to a man. And men didn't wear heels.

Certain that the shoeprints had been left by Faith, Gun started looking for anything that would alert him to her continued presence in the building. Continuing through the front room, he found the next area not much better kept than the first. The stairs leading to the second floor did not look steady enough to allow his weight.

Calling her name, Gunn waited pensively. There was no reply. Sighing, he backtracked into the front room again. The stain in the corner seemed to draw his attention again without his consent. He couldn't tear his eyes from it. Crouching down to look closer, the possibility that the blood was Faith's started to claw at his mind. Pushing that thought away, he looked closely at the substance. It was too old to be Faith's. This blood was already a very dark and dingy brown color. If Faith had been harmed a few hours ago, the blood wouldn't look this old.

A cold shiver went down his spine as he stood and he could have sworn he heard Faith whisper to him. Suddenly inexplicably fearful of this place, he turned and was out the door in an instant. Rain pelted him as he exited the hateful building and ran to his car.

Slamming the door behind him, he tried to shake off the feelings he could not give name to. Starting the engine, he almost screamed when a visage of Faith ran in front of the car. Steadying his hands, he opened the door and stood in the rain, looking for any kind of proof that he was not insane.

There was no Faith and so sign of her. Deciding that he needed help, Gunn got back in his car and locked the doors. Pulling away from the curb, he heard the whispers of calls for help. Her voice called to him, though it sounded very far away. Forcing himself to keep going, her voice died on the wind as he headed towards the Wolfram and Hart building.

Buffy was more than half way to the office when her cell phone rang. Answering Wesley's call, she almost lost control of the car when he started speaking. Ignoring the angry horns and yelling rivers, she turned the windshield wipers on with one hand while holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder. All she could focus on was that Wesley was telling her that Angel was hurt badly in an explosion. The force she had felt suddenly made sense to her as she realized that Angel being hurt had made her hurt as well.

Stepping on the gas, she screamed, dropping the phone, when a woman suddenly appeared in front of the car. The brakes came screeching to a halt as Buffy watching the car collide with the figure and pass right through her. Skidding to a halt along the curb, Buffy tried to breathe again.

Wesley was screaming through the cell phone, she could hear his voice from the floor of her car. Steadying herself, she turned around to look at the spot where she had seen the woman. She was still standing there. Looking more closely, Buffy realized she could not only see her, but see through her. Her hair was stringy, falling out. Her white skin had an ashen complex to it. Buffy nearly jumped out of her skin as another car passed through the woman, the driver didn't seem to see her, or if she did, she didn't mind.

Swallowing, Buffy blinked. When she opened her eyes again, the woman was in front of her. Fighting the urge to scream at the top of her lungs, she watched as the figure passed through the front of her car, walking towards her before disappearing entirely. The ghostly figure, Buffy realized, looked exactly like her.

Shaking, Buffy tried to tell herself that woman did not look like her. Her mind, though, knew that what she had seen looked like what she imagined a ghost would. Dragging her hand through her hair, she shook her head against the idea that she had just seen her own ghost.

Reaching down to pick up the phone from the floorboards, she assured Wesley she was alright. Pulling away from the curb, she listened as he explained Angel's condition in the most sensitive way he could.

She barely managed to close the car door behind her when she arrived at Wolfram and Hart. Rescue crews, ambulances and camera men were surrounding the building. Glass covered the ground; bleeding people were being led away from the building. Looking up, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. A smoking hole two stories tall and nearly as wide gaped in the building's side. Smoke poured out of it, pieces of debris fell every few minutes.

Turning at the sound of her name, she saw Will running to her. His face and clothes were covered in black soot and he was holding his arm to his side delicately. The two of them stood in the rain, drenched after a few minutes, before Will came to his senses.

"Buffy, come on. Wesley just called me. We've got to get to the medical bay."

Taking her hand, he led the stunned slayer through the throng of people and the far side of the building. No one was allowed inside at the time, but the bomb shelter like medical area would be safe. It had been built underground, encapsulated in its own bubble of architectural protection.

Jogging through the underground parking garage, Will lead to her to little used stairwell that went deeper into the building. The door at the bottom was activated by a key code, which Will knew, and they burst through the threshold and into the medical bay. This end of the facility was seldom used; the door they had come through was at the far end of a hallway that led to the core of the medical lab.

Stopping dead, Will looked up at the suddenly flickering lights overhead.

"What does that mean? Is the building going to collapse?"

Shaking his head, Will looked a little perplexed but started forward slowly. A familiar feeling was starting to build in his chest. "No, the blast was bad, but it only damaged the floor it was set on and the few surrounding. The structural integrity isn't that damaged. This, though, this floor runs on a separate power supply. The building's power is being shut down for safety reasons but these lights should be fine."

Just as he finished speaking, the same vision Buffy had seen while driving appeared in front of them. Shocked, Will stepped back, looking at what was the ghost of a badly decomposed Buffy. Looking to his side, he watched the living Buffy react with horror at her dead and rotting self.

Kicking himself mentally, Will swallowed hard. He recognized the feeling he had felt earlier, he had sensed the ghost's presence. As quickly as she had appeared, she was gone and the lights came on to their full normal glow. Glancing quickly at the woman at his side, he took off running.

They reached the lobby of the medical station through the door at the end of the long hallway. Wesley immediately stood and greeted them with shaky hands.

"Everyone else?" Buffy asked.

"Will, Angel and I were the only ones on those floors I think. A lot of good people are dead, but…I think all of us will make it."

Nodding her head, Buffy tried to keep her hands from shaking. She felt bad that people were dying or dead, but her foremost concern was for her family. Wesley seemed to feel the same way. "Angel? He was hurt bad?"

Wes chose his words carefully. "The bomb was in his office. We don't know how it happened. All the witnesses on that floor that could have told us anything are dead. His secretary was closest to the blast, she was eviscerated. Angel was opening the door as it went off; the door blocked a good portion of the blast. If not for that…" Wesley's mouth went dry as his tongue stopped moving.

Visions of an unresponsive Angel on the gurney, being shocked back to life, flooded his mind. Shaking his head, he tried to banish the unpleasant images. "He'll be okay. They worked on him for a while, but he came around and he's in surgery."

"He woke up? He's conscious?" The hope in her eyes faded as she saw Wesley's face.

"No," he shook his head, "he didn't wake up. His heart stopped. They told me the bleeding…they were able to revive him, they got his heart started again." A sudden thought came to him and he was unable to keep the confusion from his face. "What was in his office that was metal?"

Will looked thoughtful for a moment. "Angel's a wood kind of guy. His desk, the conference table, it was all solid wood. Maybe…no his chair and the seating area, I don't think any of it was metal. Why?"

Swallowing, Wesley looked to Buffy before he answered. "A metal…barb, I guess, it went through the door when the blast happened and…impaled him."

Buffy went pale. Sitting heavily, she put her head in her hands. This was much worse than Wesley had let on when he called her.

"I called Xander," Wesley said, "he's coming here as soon as he can. Fred wanted to come, but this is no place for the babies. Dawn didn't answer her cell phone…"

Looking away quickly, Will hid his guilty expression from Buffy. He needn't have bothered, she wasn't looking at him. Pulling her cell phone from her purse, she waited for Dawn to answer. She didn't.


	11. Chapter 11

Good God people, say something! The silence of these reviews is deafening! My confidence is shaken. I apologize again for taking obscenely long to update but I have finished writing the story and now I am being patient in uploading it. I will try to post every few days. It is what I do when I am supposed to be working. THanks for reading and please give me feedback, it really does direct where I go with future chapters and stories!

Chapter 11

Sitting around the conference table on the first floor was a ragged and despondent looking group of people. Buffy had refused to leave the medical lab, Angel was still in surgery. Dawn had reappeared a few hours earlier and had joined them in their temporary headquarters.

Sighing, Xander put his head against his closed fist. The motley crew around the table looked as if they had seen better days. Will and Wesley were covered in dirt and dried blood; their clothes were either disheveled or destroyed. Dawn, having given Buffy her shirt for the soaked slayer to change into, was wearing only a camisole and her black pants.

Drumming his fingers impatiently was Gunn. Faith had yet to be found and they had quickly come to the conclusion that her disappearance was not a coincidence. After arriving at the once intact building, Gunn had been quick to explain what he had found. Buffy had told her ghost story in a disjointed way, her mind obviously with Angel instead of the story she was telling.

Fred cleared her throat. The babies were sleeping peacefully in the corner of the room in their car seats and she was loath to wake them. Despite Wesley's warning that the building was not safe for the infants, she had insisted on bringing them anyway. Leaving them in a strangers' care was worse, Fred thought, especially since they didn't know who was orchestrating the attacks on them. As far as Fred was concerned, everyone was a suspect.

"Who's on the top of the list, Will?" Fred's eyes were burning with intensity. No one attacked her family and got away with it.

"The list is pretty long. The question is who could do it? Who could sneak into Angel's office and plant a bomb without anyone questioning him? And who could kidnap Faith? We know she wouldn't go quietly."

Xander inserted, "If there was a fight. The way Gunn described it, I don't think there was. That means she was either out cold right from the get-go, or she didn't have a chance to fight."

Gunn rubbed his tired eyes as he spoke, "The dust wasn't that disturbed. There was no fight, there was no body impression and there was only one set of footprints. She was in there alone."

Will nodded. "Magic. It has to be. No one could take Faith if she didn't want to be taken. No other footprints, none in or out and no sign of a fight. She vanished into thin air, which means magic."

"So who could plant a bomb in Angel's office and teleport Faith somewhere? He, or she, has to be powerful or have powerful witches and warlocks working for him. And he would need people that could sneak in here without anyone noticing." Fred said.

Leaning back in her chair, Dawn closed her eyes and wracked her brain. She could think of a list of people that would have the gravitas needed to complete such a plan. What confused her, though, was why no note had been sent regarding Faith.

"Why not take claim for kidnapping Faith," Dawn asked, "why let us sit here and wonder what happened to her? Do they just want to kill us all or they do they want to torment us first? Because…well that kind of determines what they did with Faith."

Gunn swallowed hard. "If they wanted to torment us, we would have gotten a note about her. She'd be alive and tortured. Since there isn't any word on her…" He paled as he lost the ability to speak.

"She's not dead, Chuck," Will said. "She's not dead. We can't think she is or we're dead in the water right now. She's alive; we just have to find her." Addressing the entire table he said, "So how do we find her? Finding her means we find who put Angel in intensive care."

Dawn nodded her agreement, "Try a locator spell first on the off chance it will work. When it doesn't, and I doubt it will, then go to the site she was last and try to follow her spirit to wherever she is."

"Okay," Will said, "Xander and Wesley, try the locator. Dawn, go with Gunn to where we know she was and try to track her. I'm going to check on Angel and Buffy and see if I can get her to come with me. I have a contact that may be able to help. Fred, find someone to watch the babies because I think we're going to need you."

Breaking up, Will tried to look confident in his delegations. He thought he was faking it well. Though he wasn't going to admit it to anyone, he was fairly sure Faith was dead. If he was orchestrating this kind of operation, he would kill the most powerful and unpredictable fighters first. That would include Faith, Angel and himself, Will thought. Swallowing at that thought, he entered the stairwell to go to the medical lab.

Half way down the first flight of steps, a familiar feeling blossomed in his chest. Picking up his pace, he was almost to the door that would take him out of the stairwell when a powerful wave of energy knocked him to his face.

Putting his arms out to catch himself before he could hit head first into the concrete stairs, he was instead hit again with an invisible force, turning him sideways. Smashing his face into the concrete, he rolled to the side and tried to see where the attack was coming from. A raspy voice, a voice that sounded like broken glass being crushed, ground through the air.

"You should have died. You are an aberration."

"Yeah, I get that a lot." Getting to his feet, he spat the pooling blood from his mouth. "What do you want?" He asked the empty air.

"You to die."

Just as Will was about to open his mouth to respond, he felt an invisible tendril of energy curl around his midsection. He was lifted into the air faster than he could comprehend. The rush of air in his ears and the wind pressure against his body ended abruptly when, fifteen stories up, he was slammed back first into a wall.

Feeling the air rush from his body, he was tossed around in midair before being slammed into the opposite wall. A sickening crack resounded through the air as his head connected with the wall. And then, as quickly as he had been taken, he was let go.

Falling through the stairwell, his mind was too cloudy to function right. It took a little more than a couple seconds for him to try to reach out and grab one of the stair railings.

Screaming in pain as he felt his arm torn from the socket, he reached his other arm up to grab the railing. Breathing hard, he couldn't manage to fill his lungs with enough air. Pulling himself up and flipping himself over the railing, he landed unceremoniously on the steps of the fourth floor. His original destination was six floors beneath him, on the second sub-level.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to stand, though he wobbled on his feet for a moment. Continuing down the stairs at a halting pace, his vision swam and his body screamed. Blood was streaming from his mouth and the back of his head, his arm was dislocated, the tendons surrounding it probably torn, a part of mind recognized.

As blackness started to edge in on his peripheral vision, he was conscious long enough to recognize the feeling in his chest. As the blackness clawed at him, he felt the air around him grow hot; the air in his lungs seemed to boil him alive from the inside out. The mental claws of his attacker ripped into his mind and he screamed for all he worth as the last part of him intact enough to think clearly hoped the rest of the team would find him before it was too late.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Pacing frantically, Fred looked at the two babies in her care and winced. Xander and Wesley had no luck with a locator spell and Gunn had called to say that Dawn was having trouble locking onto Faith's spirit. To make it worse, Fred thought, Will hadn't been seen in almost an hour. That was not a good sign. The few drops of blood at the bottom of the stairwell had led her to large splotches of blood on the walls on the fifteenth floor. She did not want to think about what had happened to her friend.

Sighing heavily, she lifted both carriers and made her way to the medical lab. Leaving the babies alone, she thought, would be disastrous. If someone wanted to hurt them, she thought, they would go after the babies. However, the other side of her mind conceded, hurting them didn't seem to be the desired outcome. She thought it was more likely that someone just wanted them dead.

Wesley burst through the door as Fred was exiting. Stopping herself from hitting him for scaring her, she set the babies on the table and crossed her arms.

"What did you find?"

"Dawn's still getting nowhere but Gunn took pictures of the blood stain and sent them to me on his phone. Look," pulling the cell phone from his pocket, he opened it and brought up the image Gunn had sent him.

"That's disgusting," she replied.

"I know." He fixed her with a stare that frightened her.

"What, Wesley? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because I want to know if you recognize it."

Staring at him as if he had three heads, she shook her head back and forth. "No, I don't recognize that. Why?"

"Look again." He stepped closer to her, a look on his face that she had rarely seen. He was deadly serious and she had no doubt that he wanted her to think long and hard before she denied recognizing the photo.

"Wesley…" she started very slowly, "that is a spot of dried blood. How am I supposed to recognize that?"

"I think you've seen it before. It is the mark of a creature that only visits this Earth once in a great while. You've met this creature. Think, Fred. Remember." His last word was laced with meaning.

She knew what he wanted her to remember. He wanted her to let the vestiges of the creature inside her remember the creature that made this mark.

"Just look it up, Wesley. If you think a dried puddle of blood is a mark of some creature, go google 'dried puddle of blood' in your books!"

"I've seen this before. Look at it closer, Fred. It isn't a dried puddle of blood. Do you see it?"

Wesley swallowed hard. Gunn had told him about the smell in the building when he had called. Hearing him describe the stench had triggered a memory somewhere. A page of an old book was in his head, a drawing of a large puddle of blood in the corner of the page with a caption explaining a devastating smell left behind after the disappearance of a man. He knew that he had seen this somewhere, there was a pattern he recognized, and he was sure that Fred had met the creature that had taken Faith.

"No, Wesley!" She snapped, "I don't see anything! I don't recognize anything!"

Dropping the phone to the table, he grabbed her shoulders and brought her close to his face. He wasn't yelling, but the venom in his words was unmistakable. "I don't have any books. My office is destroyed. I've seen that pattern before, and I've read of people disappearing into thin air, only a large area of dried blood left behind. I can't remember more than that, Fred. I tried. You can, though. You know."

Staring into his eyes, she swallowed hard. There was anger and anxiousness and fear in his eyes. He was fearful for their friends, the missing and possibly dead. She knew then that he had tried to get to his office, had wracked his brain to remember where he had seen the image in front of him. He didn't believe it was what it appeared to be.

Looking into the eyes of her husband, she heard her daughter cry behind him. She heard Xander lift the baby into his arms and sooth her. Shaking, she looked at her Wesley and saw that behind all the fear and anger in his eyes, he loved her. His sharpness was softened by his love for her and she knew that if she denied him this, he would forgive her. In that moment, she let her own fear go.

Pulling away from him, she stepped back and put her hand to her head. Focusing on the memories, the feelings, the images that she had fought so long to repress, she tried to remember what he was asking her to remember. Letting a feeling of hatred and disgust wash over her, she could see the room through the eyes of a hell god.

She could think of them in the way Illyria had thought of them, the two men in front of her. Her body remembered the feeling of power too great to contain within such a small vessel. Her mind remembered a distant past that did not belong to her. Suddenly feeling as though she was in another being's body, the part of her that was still Fred reached desperately for the tendrils of memory wafting about her.

Releasing a sob, she fell to the floor on her hands and knees. Hatred and corruption and greed surged through her. Unrepentant power surged through her veins and she remembered being trapped somewhere far away. She remembered being trapped in a place that wasn't her body or her mind. Seeing her dark cell, she felt as she had for the months that her body had been kidnapped. Dead, but not. In existence, but not.

Forcing herself away from her own body, she let herself focus on the mind and being that had kidnapped her body, her memories. As much as Illyria had known of Fred, Fred knew of Illyria. Remembering the raping of her memories and the use of her body, she pulled the last tiny remnants of the hell god forward. Illyria had been able to become Fred, her voice and body and thoughts had been that of the being the hell god had inhabited. Fred, now, knew she too could become Illyria.

In her mind, she saw a creature. A creature that was death. He looked like a rotting corpse, his long stringy hair was falling out, but was long enough to cover his face when he looked down. She heard a voice like sandpaper scratching itself and smelled the reeking stench of rotting flesh and rancid blood.

She saw a world she had never been to. A world with death and screaming and chained beings and a part of her enjoyed it. Withdrawing her mind as she would a scalded hand from a hot plate, she pulled away quickly. Locking the shards of a hell god within her, she breathed hard as she started at the floor in front of her.

She heard Wesley call her name. Looking up at him, she watched him flinch and pull away from her glare. Pure Illyria was in her eyes and Wesley saw the disgust written there. Turning his head from her, he swallowed hard and fought back the urge to cry. He wanted to save his friends, he told himself, without destroying his wife.

"Luison. His name is Luison." Pulling herself to a standing position, she walked purposefully to Xander and took her daughter from him. Turning back to Wesley, she tried to control her voice before she spoke. "Don't ever ask me to do that again."

"I won't Fred. I'm sorry. I…I need to know everything you know about him."

Swallowing hard, she held Allie close to her and let the love she had for her baby warm her. Remembering what it was to love again, she felt more like herself and less like a homicidal hellion. "He's a god of some kind. Powerful, but not…not like some others. He can be killed but I think he…he just wants to kill us. The world isn't in danger or anything."

A light seemed to go off behind Wesley's eyes. "Yes, of course. Of course." Practically running from the room, he was on the phone to Gunn before Xander had a chance to catch up to him."

"Wesley?" Xander followed him to the car garage and into the nearest SUV.

"I know what he wants. We have to get to Dawn."

Rubbing his face with his hand, Xander shook his head and wondered what the hell was going on.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Just another Monday, Connor thought. Faith had sent him upstate to make some deals for the new slayer school. Developing and decorating dormitories was not his specialty, but he figured Faith thought his art degree transformed him from a man into decorating guru. Shrugging his shoulders, he had gone on his merry way, meeting with designers and a few landscapers that had agreed to have the project finished in less than two months. All they had was two months.

Yawning, he rubbed his eyes while stopped at a traffic light. The sun was starting to set and he had been on the road since a little after the sun had risen. He was tired and ready to relax with a clod beer in front of the television. Smiling a little at the thought that he was going to be designing a building for fifty girls to live in, he wondered what kind of relationships with the new slayers would be considered unethical. Faith seemed like she would be pretty lax about that stuff, he thought.

It had been raining for hours and the skies did not look as though they were going to stop their downpour anytime soon. Turning the corner that would lead to Wolfram and Hart, Connor nearly caused a pile up as he screeched to a halt in astonishment. Forcing himself to drive calmly once again, he pulled into a parking lot that contained a lot of clean up crews and a few news vans.

Turning the car around, he drove to the far side of the building and swiped an access card that would allow him into the underground garage. Parking haphazardly, he went to the elevator that Angel used directly from his office. Pushing the button, he was dismayed when the light didn't come on. It wasn't working. Turning, he took off at a job to the other end of the complex, around the guards' station and to the far end of the garage.

Pulling the door open, he headed down the stairs that would lead to the medical area. He hoped no one he knew was there. Pulling open the door and continuing down the hall, he stopped down in his tracks once in the waiting area. Buffy was standing in front of a coffee vending machine, staring blankly at the buttons.

"Buffy?"

Ripped from her reverie, she jerked in the direction of his voice. "Connor…" Guilt swept over her as she realized no one had called to tell him that his father was in critical condition. Berating herself, she realized he probably hadn't even heard about the accident. Wincing, she motioned for him to come to her and put her arms around him.

Alarmed at her hug, he pulled away quickly. "What happened?"

"There was an explosion…"

"Yeah, I got that much from the huge hole in the building. What happened?"

Taking a breath, she released it slowly. "A bomb was set in Angel's office. It went off this afternoon. A lot of people on five floors were killed. Angel was in surgery for a few hours, he's out now. He's still unconscious."

Shaking his head, he stepped back from her again. "What do you mean he was in surgery? What happened to him? Was he in there when it went off?"

Shaking her head, she said, "No. We think it was rigged to go off when he entered. It blew when he opened the door. He's okay, Connor. He'll be okay."

"I want to see him!" Connor demanded.

Nodding, she led him through the twisting corridors that led to a small nurses' station. Passing it, they went to the first door. The walls were composed of glass so the patient could be seen at all times. Standing outside the glass walls, neither wanted to enter the room. Swallowing hard, Connor told himself that the man lying in the bed was not his father.

He was covered in bandages. The bandages on his abdomen had spots of blood seeping through them. His right arm was entirely bandaged; no skin could be seen. Tubes were in his nose and mouth and a machine next to the bed was breathing for him. A heart monitor was beeping regularly; a lot of other readings on the machine were unrecognizable to Connor.

"I'm sorry, Connor. I should have…I'm sorry. Will's missing, so is Faith. The others went to find them, Xander called me, told me they have a lead on some hell god that could be behind it."

Shaking the cobwebs from his head, Connor looked at her perplexed. "Why does a hell god set a bomb, Buffy? That's ridiculous."

Rubbing her hands across her face, she nodded. "I know. That's what I said. Do you want to see him?"

Connor shook his head in the negative. "Is he awake?"

"No. He hasn't woken up. He lost a lot of blood; he didn't have a heart beat for a while. They brought him back but they said they don't know how badly he'll be hurt."

"What do you mean? Do you…like, he might not wake up?"

She took a deep and slow breath. Her tired eyes ached from crying. There were no more tears to cry and she was able to answer him calmly. "That's the worse case scenario. They think he will. His brain didn't have oxygen for a long time, it might…he might be different. They don't know, though. Humans are different. I…I've been hurt. Faith was in a coma for over a year and she woke up and was fine. They don't know what's going to happen."

Anger rose within him. Fighting to hold his tongue, he looked at Buffy. She didn't deserve to receive the brunt of his anger.

"What are we going to do?"

Wrapping her arms around herself, she shivered. "Hell gods don't set bombs. Maybe their followers do. Either Angel's attack is totally unrelated to Faith's and Will's, or there has to be a cult somewhere."

"They just disappeared?"

"Yeah. No trace. I saw a ghost earlier, Will was with me. Faith went to see someone in the historic district and never came back. Connect a bombing, two kidnappings and a ghost citing. Where does that get you?"

"Uhh…" Rubbing his hands through his hair, he tried to focus on the puzzle Buffy had presented him with instead of the man in the bed in front of him. "That's a lot. I mean, that's a lot for one being, right? The power to just kidnap two of the most powerful people in this dimension with no evidence left behind, make ghosts appear, and to bomb an office building that has better security than Fort Knox."

"Right. And why do all that? Why haunt me with my own ghost and blow Angel up? Why not just kill us? This thing, or these people, obviously have the power to just make us disappear."

"Maybe they wanted Will and Faith specifically. Maybe Angel's a distraction."

"Some distraction…" She muttered.

Wincing, Connor spoke. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I mean…that's a lot of trouble to go to."

Nodding, she turned on her heel. Going up the stairs to the conference room, she felt Connor close on her heels. The first floor was undamaged but abandoned. Going through the empty halls, she entered the conference room they had been using. Fred was seated, head in hands, with the babies in front of her.

She looked up, startled from her thoughts, as Buffy and Connor entered. "How is he?" She asked.

"Not good. Stable, though. We need to leave the babies with the nurses downstairs. I think they'll be okay."

Fred balked. "No! Buffy we don't know what's going on; we can't leave them without protection."

"There's something wrong with this picture, Fred. A bomb, ghosts, kidnapping. What is going on? We need to be out there."

"Out where? They have a lead, they should follow it."

"The Guarani god of death? Why would he plant a bomb? Fred, what if it's bigger than that? Maybe he took Faith and Will. Why? Why would he do that? If he wants to kill us, why not do it? Who planted that bomb, who would benefit from it?"

She shook her head dejectedly. "I don't know Buffy. Look, I know just as much as you do."

"Maybe…" Connor started, "maybe this Guarani guy can't take everybody at once. He has to take them one at a time. Faith, then Will. And why did Faith go meet this hell god, anyway?"

"We don't know. I got her phone records; she called a number that no one could trace for ten seconds. That was probably someone telling her where to go." Fred said.

"I think," Connor looked pensive as he spoke, "that these are unrelated. I think Will and Faith are related and Angel is totally separate."

Fred looked horrified. "Normally, only one person a week tries to kill one of us. Two people trying all of us in the same day, at the same time, that's a little much even for us."

"I know that, but it makes more sense than anything else. Look, figure out who got in to Angel's office and stay with the babies, but I think Buffy's right, I don't think they're targets. Buffy and I should go meet the others. They might need us."

Neither woman seemed to like his plan, least of all Buffy, but she followed him outside to the garage and to his car none the less. Watching Angel was not comforting, and she needed to kill whoever had hurt him. If she couldn't do that, she would kill the hell being stealing her friends.

Getting an address from Xander, she relayed it to Connor and hung on as he sped through downtown. Feeling ill prepared for a fight, she still hoped to meet one. Slaying would calm her nerves and make her feel productive. And she wanted to share her pain with something big and ugly. She was in that kind of mood, she thought.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Sighing, Fred held Brady while pacing the room. She was itching to do something. Wracking her brain about what Connor had said, she cooed in the baby's ear. Her voice stopped suddenly as a thought struck her. Setting the infant in his carrier, she grabbed both car seats and started for the car garage. Buffy was going to kill her for taking them anywhere near the battle that was bound to happen, but Fred couldn't stand the idea of leaving them with people she didn't know.

Driving through the streets, she hit the steering wheel with her fist. Why hadn't she seen it before, she asked herself. She was supposed to be the smart one. Speeding into the historic district, it took her mush less time to get there than it normally would have. Screeching to a halt in front of the dilapidated building that Faith had been kidnapped from, Fred swallowed hard.

Looking in the rear view mirror at the two tiny people in the back seat, she took a deep breath and fished out her cell phone. Wesley answered on the second ring.

"A witch."

"Fred…what? What are you talking about?"

"Wesley, who could kidnap two powerful people, set a bomb in a highly secured building, appear as a hell god no one's seen in centuries, and make Buffy see ghosts? A witch, Wesley! It's not a cult or a hell god, Wes! It's one person!"

She heard him gasp on the other end of the phone. "Where are you?"

"Parked behind you. I'm outside."

"What! You couldn't call me from the office?"

Sighing, she rubbed her tired eyes. "You might need me. We're down three people, anyone who can swing a sword is helpful."

"The babies are with you?"

"Yes."

"Well you can't very well bring them in here. Listen, stay in the car. I'll page you if we need you but don't come in here right now. We can handle it." He hung up before she could respond.

Grinding her teeth, she scrolled through the numbers in her phone until she came to one she needed. It took only a few seconds for Willow to answer.

"Fred! Good to hear from you…"

Fred didn't give her a chance to finish. "Could you make it look like a hell god stole two people, actually kidnap and hide two slayer powered individuals and make people see ghosts?"

"All at the same time?"

"I'm not kidding Willow! Could you do that?"

"I could, sure. What's going on?"

Glancing at the infants behind her again, Fred continued, "Faith and Will were kidnapped. No trace of them, no evidence at all. They vanished. Buffy and Will saw Buffy's ghost. A bomb was set off in Angel's office, he's in critical condition. It's been set up to look like a hell god did it, but it doesn't make any sense. I think it's a witch, or a warlock."

It took Willow a moment to take that all in. "Okay. None of that sounds like any kind of creature I've ever heard of. Yeah, if I wanted to do all that, I could. I would bet…I would say it's a witch."

"Any names off the top of your head?"

"I don't know every witch on the planet. Or off planet for that matter. Look for power. Try tracing her powers back to her, that's your best bet. Do you want me to come there?"

Fred hesitated. "Actually, I need a babysitter. I have Allie and Brady with me and I can't leave them but I think I could help."

She heard Willow thinking on the other end of the line. Or imagined she could hear Willow thinking. "Okay, listen, I can protect them from here. Go, I'll keep them safe, I can see them."

"You can…?" She stopped herself, thinking it best not to question the powers of the most powerful witch on the planet. "Okay. Keep them safe."

Hanging up, she grabbed the door handle and hesitated. Leaving them alone was stupid and dangerous. And Willow was babysitting via long distance telepathy. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door into the rain and ran to the front door. She was thrown back onto the concrete sidewalk as soon as she reached the stoop.

Grunting, she picked herself up from the ground. She could feel her back starting to bleed; the sidewalk had cut through her shirt and into her skin. Wincing, she looked at the five feet she had skidded across the sidewalk. Pulling herself to a standing position, she started walking painfully towards the door. This was going to be the worst brush burn of her life, she thought.

This time, she wasn't polite about entering. Slamming the door open, she looked for traces of her friends. Footprints led to the back of the building. Making her way slowly there, she stopped at the threshold of a doorway. Listening, she heard a sudden scream and burst through the door.

Dawn had been reciting an incantation, hoping to read the power remnants that were left in the building. As she had felt the tug of power at the tips of her consciousness, an invisible tendril had grabbed her ankle. Flying through the air, she gave a scream as she saw Buffy try to reach for her. Slamming hard into the opposite wall, she looked up just in time to see Wesley hit the ceiling.

Fred dove for the spell book and immediately picked up where Dawn had left off. Fred was no witch, but she could read and concentrate and she thought even a little power was better than none. She ducked just in time as Gunn flew past her head and into the floor. Xander followed quickly behind him and she heard his grunt as he slammed into Gunn.

Wasting no time on her pain, Dawn picked her sore body up and looked around. One by one, her friends were being thrown about like rag dolls. One by one, Dawn thought. Never at the same time. Something clicked in her mind. As she was about to yell out, everyone went still.

Picking themselves up from where they had landed, everyone looked at each other, all a little shaken. As suddenly as they had been whipped around, Buffy's ghost was in front of them. The ghoul opened her mouth three times as wide as any human ever could and shrieked a banshee's call. Covering her ears, Dawn crouched to the ground and watched as the apparition grew in size.

The shrieking came complete with wind, and Buffy had to cover her eyes to keep her hair from stinging them. Peeking between her fingers, she watched as Dawn stood with a very angry look on her face. Tearing her eyes from Dawn, she saw that Fred was yelling something none of them could hear. Edging closer to her friend, Buffy reached for Fred to try and draw her close enough to hear what she was saying.

The wind stopped abruptly and before she could reach Fred, Buffy went flying. Hitting the ceiling and then the floor in quick succession, she groaned when she hit the ground the third and final time. Seeing her sister manhandled by an invisible force sent Dawn diving to Buffy's side. Grabbing her sister's shoulders, she turned her onto her back. Looking up at the rest of the group, she gasped when she saw Fred.

A black hole was opening up beneath Fred and she was quickly sinking through it. Screaming, she grabbed at the floorboards. The dark heat consuming her singed her skin. Reaching out, she felt Wesley's hand on hers and held on tight. Xander dragged himself to where Buffy was and brought her battered form closer to him.

Standing, Dawn left her sister's side. Taking a deep breath, she knew it was time to end this fight. Closing her eyes, she concentrated harder than she ever had in her life. Her hands shook as she brought them up and in front of her. The ground shook as it released its hold on Fred.

All eyes were focused on Dawn. So was the being behind their attacks, Dawn realized. Feeling the tendrils trying to grasp her again, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Green light flooded from first her hands but quickly spread to her entire body. Sending the energy that coursed through her out into the room she threw her head back when she felt the power she had been searching for.

A second scream matched Dawn's as a figure came into view. Through the almost blinding green light, Buffy could see a small woman in the corner of the room. A corner none of them had been thrown into. As the light faded back into her sister, Buffy looked at the visage of a small and pathetic looking woman.

The scaly skin and stringy hair faded away to an old woman with wrinkles and a hook nose. The screaming woman shrunk into herself as she collapsed to the floor, her visage fading to that of a young girl with mousy brown hair and unremarkable features.

Falling to the floor, Dawn saw through heavy eyes a young girl, weeping on the floor. Waves, like heat waves, she thought, went through the air and the room rose in temperature by at least ten degrees. Struggling to breath, Dawn saw the room expand and grow until it was twice the size.

Lying in the newly revealed area were Will and Faith. Dawn was on her knees, springing herself to her feet before anyone else had reacted. Skidding to a halt in front of Will, she gently lifted his head into her lap, stroking his hair while she did so.

Gunn was lifting Faith in his arms and setting her on his lap as he went to his knees. Holding her unconscious form to his chest, he breathed into her hair and whispered in her ear. Her stirring made him pull away long enough to look into her pained eyes. Wincing, she pulled herself a few inches away from him and took a deep breath.

Buffy's jaw dropped to the floor when she saw her sister hold Will's head in her lap. A light went off in her brain. His eyes opened slowly, they were nearly swollen shut. His cracked and swollen lips smiled slightly as Dawn touched the dried blood on his face. She called his name as he faded back into unconsciousness.

'Will! Someone help me!" Dawn screamed.

Wesley was at her side, trying to lift Will in his arms. Pulling herself from her stupor, Buffy picked herself up, ignoring the pain coursing throughout her body, and went to Will and her sister. Lifting the unconscious man in her arms, she started out the door. Gunn, carrying Faith, was close on her heels.

Going to the sobbing girl in the corner, Fred looked at her curiously. Wesley recognized her stance and facial expression; Fred was analyzing the creature in front of her much the same way Illyria had analyzed people. Joining his wife, he looked down at the young witch.

"Why?" He asked her, "Why did you do all this?"

"I deserve it!" She spat, "not you! None of you! I deserve it!" Her incoherent ranting continued, but Wesley was no longer interested in her. Calling in a team to pick her up, he followed his wife from the building.

The others had already left, no doubt to get medical treatment, Wesley thought. Getting into the car with Fred, he looked in the back seat in horror.

"You left them alone in here!"

Sighing, Fred closed her eyes, leaned across the car and shut Wesley up with her lips.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Willow smiled sadly into the web-cam that allowed her to view her friends. Nine people were gathered around a conference table looking up at the large screen television that had Willow's face on it.

Will's face was healing, in only twenty-four hours the swelling had gone down. A bandage was wrapped around his head; the skull fracture in the back of his head was taking longer to heal. His vision was fuzzy and sometimes he saw double, but the doctors had told him those symptoms would disappear as he healed. The constricting bindings around his ribs gave him more trouble. The two cracked ribs made it hard to dress and bathe, but Dawn had been more than willing to help in those areas.

Faith didn't look any the worse for wear. She had been given a clear bill of health, though she had felt pain and discomfort throughout the night. Even now she had a headache. She knew that was insignificant compared to other injuries her friends had suffered.

Buffy's body was healing but her own cracked ribs meant that lifting Brady was next to impossible. Fred had taken Brady home with her for the night while Buffy slept in a chair next to Angel's bed in the recovery room.

Cuts, scrapes and bruises were healing and fading. Fred's back was covered in bandages and she had been given antibiotics to take for a week to prevent infection, but she had been able to sleep fairly soundly the night before.

"So, the girl's here with me. We're trying to talk to her but mostly it's incoherent. We got some of the story, though. A bullied girl, unpopular all her life, realized she had a really great power. Apparently, she got involved in a really bad underworld and heard about you guys. It gets fuzzy from there. Our psychologist guy says she had delusions and psychotic tendencies."

"A schizophrenic witch? That's a new one." Will leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes against the dancing spots.

"Yeah, well, she's getting help. I heard that with medications and therapy she might be normal again."

"She tried to kill us, Willow!" Fred looked incredulous. "Angel's still not conscious!"

Willow bit her lip. "How is he?"

Buffy shook her head a little. "No one can tell when he'll wake up."

Dawn cleared her throat. "What about that bomb? Why do that? Why not just take him like she did Faith and Will?"

Shrugging, Willow looked apologetic. "Sometimes you don't get all the answers, Dawn. Irrational hatred of Angel. We think he was the target of her fantasies. Something like that. Or it was for the challenge of doing it. You know, bomb a building instead of just kidnap him and hold him in a hell-like cell. We'll know more when the meds take effect."

Nodding, Buffy rubbed her sore temples and winced as she touched a rather purple bruise just above her hairline. She was tired of being beat up, she thought. Nodding to everyone else, she started to make her way to medical lab. The others could talk about the young witch's fate; Buffy couldn't convince herself to care. She just wanted Angel to wake up.

The gaping hole in the building was covered with plastic and tape and crews were scheduled to begin working to rebuild the floors that had been destroyed. The blast had destroyed about a quarter of each floor, but Angel's had suffered the most damage. The damage in the other areas had been from the shaking right after the blast instead of the explosion itself.

Sighing, she leaned her head against the side of the elevator and waited patiently for her stop. She hadn't left Angel's side for more than an hour at any given time and she was not about to break that habit. He needed her.

As the elevator doors opened to stark white of the waiting area, she looked around with growing horror as nurses and doctors ran about wildly. Grabbing the nearest nurse, Buffy brought her within inches of her own face.

"What happened?"

"He's gone…he just…we were watching him, and…"

Releasing the nurse, Buffy ran to the room Angel had been in for twenty-four hours. Finding it empty, she cursed and turned on her heels. The last time he had vanished from the medical center he had gone in search of more comfortable surroundings. She hoped that was the answer. Other possibilities frightened her too much to think about.


	16. Chapter 16

I have come to the conclusion that I update entirely too quickly. There's no suspense, you know? Oh well, I guess I know better for the next story. Anyway, thank you for all the great comments, I really appreciate them! Constructive criticism always welcome!

Chapter 16

Opening his eyes hurt. Trying to talk hurt and was impossible. Reaching a shaky arm up to his face, he felt the tubes in his nose and mouth. Disconnecting the tube in his mouth from the apparatus it was attached to, he took a deep breath and started to pull it out of his throat. Coughing, he leaned over the bed and winced.

Anger replaced confusion as he pulled the thinner tube from his nose. Gagging, he dry heaved a few times as he threw the retched tube to the floor, ignoring whatever it was hooked to. Coughing again, he pulled himself to a sitting position and gasped at the pain in his abdomen.

It took a moment for him to get him bearings. Pulling the intravenous lines from his hand and heart monitor from his chest, he reached up slowly to disconnect the wire that caused the machine to beep annoyingly. His right arm was bandaged from shoulder to wrist and it hurt and pulled as he moved it. Ignoring the pain, he pulled the sheet from his waist and winced at the tube he realized was in his bladder.

Cursing every doctor he had ever met, he reached for a syringe on the bedside table and went about disconnecting the tube from his body. Wincing at the strange sensation, he made sure to throw that bag in the trash that was next to the bed.

He stood on shaky feet and swayed a few times. Blinking his eyes, he put his hands to his stomach and winced at the pain. Stumbling to the large windows that lined the wall of the room, he looked through the open blinds at two nurses talking amongst themselves. They seemed none too concerned with his room.

Closing the blinds entirely, he hobbled back to the bed and looked at his leg strangely. A line of sutures crossed his thigh; orange antibiotic ointment covered the ugly gash. He couldn't remember when that had happened. Struggling to the chair at the other side of the bed, he leaned against it trying to catch his breath. The closet behind the chair had a t-shirt and scrub pants in it. A small overnight bag sat next to those clothes. He smiled a little. For when he woke up, he thought.

Pulling the pants on was difficult and the shirt might had made his stitches rip, but he was determined to get out of that room. Making his way to the door, he grabbed a roll of surgical tape from the bedside table. Opening the door an inch, he threw the surgical tape down the hall with all his might. The resounding thud it made against the far wall of the hallway was enough to make both nurses walk briskly towards the sound.

Sighing quietly, he padded barefoot from the room and went as quickly as possible to the waiting area. It was blissfully empty and the elevator arrived quickly. Leaning his head against the wall, he breathed deeply, bracing his abdomen as he did so. Pain seared through his torso and he winced at the sudden impulse to sit down.

Dragging himself from the elevator, his jaw fell open at the site in front of him. He had forgotten that this elevator was perpendicular to the regular elevator banks used by everyday employees and clients. Those were destroyed on this floor. He looked from the side of the lobby to the wreckage in front of him.

His office was gone. The walls that once separated his space from the lobby had disappeared. Everything was black. Suppressing a shudder, he stepped further into the lobby and stopped when he heard the floor below him creak uncertainly. It smelled of death and decay and rotting wet wood.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he wondered how many had died. He wondered who had caused it, why they had done it. Wiping his damp eyes, he suddenly had horrible images of Buffy in the wreckage. Irrational fear swept over him as he realized that he was hyperventilating. Leaning on the wreckage that had once been his secretary's desk, he tried to get his breath.

His vision swam as he realized that he had no idea how to find any of them. He was sure the building was abandoned and a sudden fear that he was alone overtook him. His fuzzy mind concluded that everyone he had loved had died.

Trying to keep on his feet, the pain in his head grew exponentially as he felt his knees give out. His descent to the floor was stopped by strong hands grabbing at him. Inhaling sharply, he grabbed at the wrist of one of the hands.

Wesley pulled him to his feet, Gunn supporting his other side.

"Oh my God, Angel! What are you doing?" Buffy took his head in her hands and looked into the deep brown eyes of the man she loved.

Blinking a few times, he looked at the beautiful woman in front of him. "You're not dead?"

Shaking her head, she said, "no, Angel. I'm fine. You're the one that almost died. We have to get you back downstairs."

"My head hurts," he conceded.

"That's because you have a concussion."

"Contusion," Wesley corrected. "It's a brain contusion. It's worse that a concussion."

"Thanks," Buffy said dryly.

Pain raced through his arm as Gunn tried to support his weight with it. Wincing, he tried to pull it away from Gunn and lost his footing. Hearing far away voices, he decided it was best to be quiet and go where they wanted him to go. Half carrying him, half dragging him to the elevator, they let him slide down the wall and lean his head against it as he sat on the floor.

"Can't I just go home?" He asked.

Wesley, Gunn, Will, and Buffy all yelled at the same time. The consensus was in the negative. Muttering under his breath, he let them help him from the floor and back through the med-lab as two doctors rushed to his side.

Pushing them all away, Angel sat on the bed for a few moments and focused on breathing.

"I want to go home. I am the president, I can do that. Give me some morphine, because I'm leaving."

Buffy dragged a hand through her hair and winced at the pain it caused her. "You were impaled with a metal running board from your wet bar. The door to your office crushed your ribs; they're wired together, now, by the way. Your stomach's bleeding and your leg isn't working right and you were unconscious since yesterday. You're not going home."

Looking up at her, his face conveyed that he wasn't going to entertain arguments. "I am going home."

Sighing dejectedly, she looked at his beaten form and nodded her head. Looking to the doctor, she motioned for him to follow her into the hallway.

Looking at Will, Angel narrowed his eyes. "Is everyone okay?"

"You were the only one to be seriously injured in the blast." Sighing, Will started to explain what had happened and where he had obtained his own injuries.

Half way through the explanation, Angel's eyes had closed and he was breathing normally, leaning against the head of the bed. After getting him back into bed, Buffy sat next to him and held his hand as he slept. Thanking the others for helping get him situated, Will smiled at her.

"You knew he'd fall back asleep."

"Yeah. He's stubborn, but everyone has limits. I figure I've got a few hours before I have to fight with him again."

Smiling, Will turned to follow Wesley and Gunn from the room. He stopped when he heard Buffy's voice.

"By the way, next time you marry my sister, you might want to tell me." Smiling sweetly, she watched the color drain from his face as he stuttered a reply.

Sliding quietly from the room, Wesley and Gunn looked at each other, both of them sure they had either heard wrong or that Will was going to be seriously injured.

Getting back on the elevator, Wesley sighed and touched the bandaged cut above his eye. "Another day at the office."

Gunn nodded. "I hate Mondays."


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Being dragged into a witch's own little slice of hell was almost worth it for breakfast in bed. Stretching her arms lazily above her, she watched Gunn bring a tray towards her. Inhaling the aroma of bacon and eggs, she leaned back on the pillows and savored the site of an attractive man delivering food to her.

After their Tuesday conference with Willow and Angel's attempted escape from the medical lab, everyone had gone home to try and relax. Now, Wednesday morning, Faith was being pampered by her boyfriend. Boyfriend, she thought, that was a new term for her.

Grabbing his shoulders and pulling him to her side, she lifted herself up and kissed Gunn passionately. Smiling into the kiss, he pulled away long enough to present her with breakfast. Her headache had almost entirely subsided; she could ignore the last of the discomfort behind her eyes.

Will had fared much worse than her, Faith thought. She almost laughed when she thought of Will. Buffy had given him a stern talking to, but after seeing her sister hold his unconscious form, Buffy had accepted the situation, for the most part. He and Dawn were probably feeding each other in bed as well, Faith thought.

"So, do we know anything about Dawn and powerful greenness?"

Pulled from her reverie, she looked at him and wiped her hands on a napkin before answering. "Well, she's the key. Powerful mystical energy or whatever. I guess it was just a matter of time before she figured out how to harness that power."

"Some power. Pulled that witch bitch out of her hiding place and brought you and Will back."

"Yeah. I imagine Wesley will research it until his fingers bleed from page turning." She smiled up at him. "We're all a little different, you know?"

He laughed into the crook of her neck. "That's an understatement. A huge understatement."

Eggs were forgotten as she set the tray on the nightstand and tackled her gorgeous boyfriend. Smiling down at him, she realized with intensity that this was what happiness felt like. Trying to contain her sudden and overwhelming feelings, she channeled them into something Gunn could appreciate.

Half a dozen blocks away, Dawn was staring at the gash in the back of Will's head. Sighing, she dabbed an antiseptic ointment on it and gently fixed his hair so the wound was almost covered. Crawling around the bed so she was in front of him, she ran her thumb lightly across his already healed bottom lip.

His ribs were healing quickly; he could almost lift his hands above his head without wincing. Leaning into him, she gently touched the long wound above his eye that had already closed. She doubted it would leave a scar, but she had been careful to clean it and apply antiseptics to it anyway.

Leaning closer to his face, she gently touched her lips to his. The kiss wasn't passionate of desperate. It was sweet and laced with concern and caring. The gentle pressure of her lips against his reminded him what she was to him and he reached his arms slowly upwards to rest his hands on her shoulders.

Pulling away, she kissed his cheek before leaning back to rest on her ankles again. "I love you." It was simple and true and she knew that this admittance was not news to Will. She said it anyway because she thought it would be a good idea to say it out loud. For herself if not for him.

"I love you too, Dawn."

"I'm glad my sister didn't kill you."

"Me too. Being dead would cramp my style."

Laughing lightly, she leaned back on her elbows on the big bed and contemplated him. "So, we're officially moved in together."

"I thought it wasn't official. And I quote, 'I'm just keeping stuff here.'"

She played with the hem of her shirt for a second before answering. "Yeah, well. That was before you almost died. I think, since we're married and Buffy knows and everyone else will know soon if they don't already, and I already have everything here…I should sublease my apartment."

Nodding slowly at this acknowledgment, he fought to keep from smiling. Plastering a contemplative look on his face, he put his hand to his chin and looked towards the ceiling, as if in deep thought. "I don't know Dawn…"

She was careful not to hurt him, but he definitely felt her foot connect with his shin. "Ouch! Okay, okay, I surrender. I guess it's okay if you live here. I mean, I suppose I can put up with you." That earned him another kick to the shin.

Bouncing from the bed, she took herself into the living room. Following slowly, Will made himself comfortable on the couch as Dawn handed him the remote.

"I get the remote? I'm shocked. Don't you want to watch that Kardashian sister show or something with Hugh and the playmates or those awful sluts in the city reruns?"

She fixed a glare of death on him before speaking. "You get it today. Don't get spoiled though, I'm the woman, which means I get the button whenever I want."

"It's a remote."

"I call it a button."

"It has more than one button."

"I can take it back, you know."

He shut up at that. Turning to a car show he knew she hated, he leaned back and smiled. Being beat almost to death by an angry witch had its perks. Watching the welding of an engine block with the enthusiasm of a British soccer fan at the world cup, his thoughts almost drifted to Angel for a few moments. He would call later, he assured himself.

It felt good to hold her son, Buffy thought. It had felt like an eternity since he had been in her arms. Cooing into his ear, she walked figure eights through the living room of her Hollywood Hills home. Angel was sleeping upstairs; he had demanded to go home when he had woken in the afternoon the day before. Buffy knew what battles were not worth fighting.

Connor had taken it upon himself to do Angel's bidding while he recovered. Smiling at the thought of her step son running around like an over zealous nurse, she watched him come down the stairs and fill an ice pack with fresh ice. He had never seen his father this hurt, she knew, and he wanted to help in the healing process.

Angel could walk unassisted, but the stitches in his midsection tended to tear when he did that. The doctors had sedated him after his escape attempt in order to fix the stitches and staples he had ruined while running around the halls of Wolfram and Hart. Frowning at that thought, she watched Connor take himself back up the stairs, ice pack and newly brewed tea in hand.

The burns covering his right arm were fading; the skin was starting to re-grow itself in places. There was a very interesting scar on his left thigh, but she had been told it would fade in time. He was lucky he hadn't broken his leg, she thought. Cooing to her son again, she took herself outside to the patio and sat in the rocking chair Angel had bought for her just before Brady's birth.

Smiling down at his round little face, she touched the tips of her fingers to his cheeks. He always smiled when she did that. Fred had been kind enough to take him for the previous night, until Buffy thought she could lift him again. She had been eager to get her son back in the morning.

She could hear Connor and Angel speaking upstairs. The balcony doors to the master bedroom were open and the sound wafted softly outside. Straining her ears to hear, she almost caught a few words here and there. Mentally shaking herself, she reminded herself that eves dropping was bad. Lifting her feet to the matching rocking ottoman in front of her, she dropped her shirt down a little and held Brady to her breast.

He had been bottle fed too much in the past few days, she thought. Relaxing into the time with her son, she allowed her eyes to close as she drifted into a peaceful place that was in between wakefulness and sleep. Her family had dodged another bullet and if felt good to be safe and alive and together.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

"Hurry up and relax."

Sighing, she allowed herself a smile at that. "You never know when the world's going to end."

"So let's get comfortable while we can."

Turning onto her back, she looked up at the ceiling and brushed her dark hair from her face. "You can't keep coming out here Xander."

"They don't need me today. Besides, I'm off to the Philippines tomorrow. This is my lay over."

"You should be with them."

"They want to relax with their families. What am I going to do? Barge in on Fred and Wesley making out and offer to change the baby? I'm like a ninth wheel or something."

Pulling herself from the bed, she let the sheets drop from herself. Stretching her arms towards the sky, she leaned back until her head was almost touching the bed again. That was an interesting view, he thought. Watching her naked form walk to the bathroom, he leaned against the headboard and allowed himself a small smile.

Seeing that she had left the door open, he took that as an invitation. Lifting himself from the bed, he followed her through the open door. She was adjusting the water temperature for a bath.

"I thought you were a shower person."

"Baths relax me."

"That's a big tub for small woman."

Turning to face him, she scowled but there was no malice in her face. He was too endearing to deserve anything but kindness from her. "I'm not that small. And you should join me."

Leaning his naked frame against the door jam, he watched her pull her hair into a twist and secure it at the back of her head. "We should join a nudist colony."

The look on her face was confusion mixed with a 'what's wrong with you' kind of stare, Xander thought. Laughing, he removed the black eye patch that he wasn't supposed to get wet. What looked like a flesh covered bandage was underneath it, but the bandage was permanent. He had opted to have a skin graft cover the entire area than have a creepy looking glass eye rolling around in his head. It looked almost as if he had never had an eye.

Cordy never seemed to mind his disfigurement. She hardly ever stared, and if she did, it was never in a way that made him uncomfortable. She had seen horror, and someone with no eye was some of the least stirring things she had witnessed in her life. Turning to him, she lifted her arm and touched the area where his eye once had been. Her fingers lightly traced the scar that outlined the area.

Pulling her hand back slowly, she leaned back against the sink in the modest bathroom. It took him less than a second to reach her and lift her to him. With the sounds of the water pouring into the tub in the background, he took her against the sink, her legs wrapped around his waist as he held her from underneath. It was hard to describe what her acceptance of him made him feel, but the physical evidence of his feelings, he felt, were enough to convey his feelings.

After the tub had almost overflowed and the water had drained to an acceptable level, they sat opposite each other, the silence in the room comfortable and welcomed. It was nice not to have to talk, Xander thought. They were both content to let silence fill the room.

He touched the scar on her abdomen with his toes. Smiling, she suppressed a laugh and leaned her head back. She remembered what had caused that scar and instead of wincing, she let the memories pass in her mind without reaction. Their history, instead of making her wary, made her more eager to confide in him. It had been easy to catch up, to get to know each other again.

"How long will you be gone?" Her own toes traced the muscles in his arms and chest. Definitely more muscular than he had been ten years ago, she was pleasantly surprised at the physical reactions she had to his body. He was battle hardened, a warrior in his own right, and his body reflected that he had done manual labor and put in time in a dojo.

Smiling, he shifted a little as her smooth foot rested on his pectoral muscle. "A few days. Longer than that if there's a problem. I should be back by Monday."

"Will you come here on your way back to L.A.?" The question was more of a statement. She knew that he never passed up an opportunity for them to be together.

"Of course I will." Content to see her between trips, he knew that of he pressed her for more she would withdraw from him. Slow and easy, he told himself. There was no rush.

She bit her lower lip and looked at him through lowered eyes, a wanton look on her face. He laughed at her expression and splashed water at her. "You're insatiable."

"I just want you to have something to look forward to in five days."

"It might be longer than that."

"I can wait."

Closing his eye, he felt the water shift as she moved. She was kneeling in between his knees now, rubbing her wet hands across his shoulders. The pressure of her hands slowly increased until she was massaging the deep muscles of his shoulders and neck. A low groan escaped his lips as he felt his body release the tension that he carried in his back.

"Why are you still single?"

"Most men don't like women who can beat them up."

"You can beat me up anytime," he replied.

She did actually laugh at that. "Maybe I'll take you up on that offer when you get back."

Relaxing under her hands, he leaned forward just enough to capture her lips with his. Releasing her from the kiss a few moments later, he smiled at her. He didn't say anything. Words would ruin the moment, he thought. Telling her how much he cared for her would scare her away. Saying something flippant would kill the mood. So he stayed silent. Learning to control his tongue throughout the years had been to his benefit, he thought.

Looking at the man in front of her, she wondered if she had ever stopped having feelings for him. They had been an unlikely couple when they were younger. She had moved on through hatred of him after his betrayal of her, but she knew the follies of adolescent couldn't be held against him now. It seemed like a lifetime ago, she thought.

Leaning close to him, she put her head on his chest and listened to his heart beat. Perhaps, she thought, he was what she had been searching for. A warrior, a heartbeat, a good and caring soul, and an attractive body to wrap it all up in. Every good quality of every man she had ever been attracted to and none of the bad. She was thankful he lacked the naivety and childlike charm of Groo. Xander had youthful charm, but it was tempered with life experience.

Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she breathed in his smell and smiled. This was nice. She could get use to this. Maybe, she thought, being alive wasn't going to be so bad after all.


	19. Chapter 19

Epilogue

There were applause and singing as the cake was brought out. Setting the cake before her son, she watched as he tried to pull the cone shaped hat from his head. Frowning at her in a patented Angel glare, she just laughed.

Crouching next to her son, she tried to encourage him to pay attention to the cake. "Blow out the candles, Brady!"

Helping her now one year old son to extinguish the flame from the wax number one on the cake, she bounced him in her arms as everyone around them yelled and made a fuss over the birthday boy.

Kissing his wife, Angel smiled at his beautiful son. Running his hands through Brady's thick, dark hair, Angel smiled. Brady had Buffy's features, a delicate nose, green eyes, and high cheek bones. He had his father's hair and temperament. Buffy had said that Brady's smile reminded her of Angels'.

Everyone was clapping, including Allie. She was only five months older than Brady, and had experienced her own birthday party not long ago. Following her mom's movements, she clapped her hands and screamed her high pitched baby coo at the top of her voice.

Looking down at Allie, a little startled, Dawn let out a laugh. She was hoping her baby was a girl. She and Will had received the news the day before, but she hadn't told anyone yet. She vowed to tell at least her sister after the festivities were over.

Taking his daughter from Dawn, Wesley nuzzled his lips into her dark brown hair and laughed. She had Fred's smile and eyes and Wesley's nose. Gunn said she was going to be a heart breaker when she grew up. Wesley thought he would turn into a leg breaker once suitors started calling on his daughter. She was the one person on the face of the planet that could make him comfortable doing research from prison.

Stealing his little brother from Buffy, Connor tickled Brady until the toddler giggled and cooed. Smearing a little icing from the cake onto Brady's fist, Connor watched the baby try to shove his entire hand in his mouth as he licked at the sugary concoction.

Buffy and Fred had baked the cake that morning, and though neither of them were geniuses in the kitchen, somehow the chocolate layer cake had turned out to look and taste good. Buffy was glad she hadn't had to go to the bakery at the last notice. She was trying to expand her domestic skills.

Wrapping his arms around Dawn, Will whispered something in her ear that Faith could see made her blush. Snickering to herself, she looked at Gunn. He was laughing with Angel and Giles, obviously having a good time. Rearranging the presents on the table, she smiled to herself. She was glad the marriage and baby bug hadn't bit her. These chumps could have their institutions, she thought. She was perfectly happy living and working with Gunn. Putting their commitment on paper was a little much for her.

Looking to her side, she saw Willow join her and Faith took a deep breath. Somehow, she had been roped into handing the presents to Buffy and Brady so they could open them. Plastering a smile on her face, she tried to tell herself that she was not having as much fun as she thought she was. It wasn't right for a slayer to find happiness is bright blue boxes with orange ribbons and tiny little baby bibs, Faith thought. Buffy was an abnormality.

Telling stories like the proud grandparent he was, Giles put his arms around Angel and hugged the man in a rare show of affection between the two. He was the closest Giles was going to come to a son in law, and they had been slowly getting to know each other better over the past year.

Xander was trying to coax Cordy from her spot in the corner of the veranda, but she seemed content to sit with Cerise and Amelia. Trying not to show how uncomfortable she was, she caught Angel's eye for a moment and smiled. He waved to her a little, a smile spreading across his face. Smiling back at him, she couldn't help but feel happy for her friend. He was happy, content, perfectly at peace in his life.

Though they had denied it all year, everyone knew she and Xander were living together in Chicago. He had subleased his Las Angeles apartment a few months ago and was now commuting around the world form the windy city. Turning to the slayer to her left, Cordy smiled at the embarrassing stories Amelia was telling about Connor.

The slayer had met Connor when she had first moved to the slayer school, which was running effectively. Connor had been right; Faith had been fine with him dating a slayer at the school. They had been together only a few months, but the family liked her already. Buffy had insisted the girl come to the birthday party.

Cerise and Willow had been joined in a civil union in May. Their four year relationship seemed to be going smoothly, Cordy thought. She had never seen Willow so content. Cerise had no special powers, she wasn't s a demon. She was just a woman trying to help save the world in any way she could. Cordy knew that extended to keeping those with powers happy. It wasn't an easy job, either.

Connor had spoken to Cordy briefly in a few telephone conversations, but Cordy thought the young man was accepting his past. He didn't need her to explain things to him; he had either figured it out or had accepted it as fact and moved on. She envied his ability to be so casual around her. She still found it difficult to look him in the eye.

Looking at her watch, Cordy realized she was tapping her foot. She and Xander were catching a plane in two hours and it seemed she would have to suffer through more togetherness before they could leave. She preferred graveyards and zombies any day, she thought. Seeing everyone happy and in the same place made her feel good inside, but also a little awkward. She didn't belong there, she thought.

Watching his wife and son open presents in front of him, he fought the urge to take pictures every few seconds. Angel had come to accept the fact that he was a big dork and a total pushover when it came to Brady. Gunn had made sure Angel came to accept it by pointing it out every chance he got. Smiling at the scene in front of him, he laughed without reason.

He was happy. His wife was happy. His sons were happy. Looking around at the people standing around the pool and under the gazebo, he was filled with a sense of belonging. This was where he was supposed to be. This was his life, he thought. His wonderful life.


End file.
